Learning to wait in ‘God’s good time:’ a matter of faith during times of doubt

I often hear the phrase “in God’s good time.” It is usually spoken when I or someone close to me is trying to develop greater patience in the face of a difficult situation.

When can I go home from the hospital? When will the baby come? How long will my chemo last? How much physical therapy will I need? When will I get my addiction under control? When will my husband or wife come home from the war? When will God answer my prayers?

“In God’s good time.” It is an answer that often doesn’t satisfy and can, on occasion, infuriate. As an answer to the universal problem of suffering – why do bad things happen to good people? – it is a phrase that, in fact, probably does a great injustice to God, a God who created a world filled with pleasure and the potential for good, only to see humanity fill it with conflict, indifference and needless waste.

Nonetheless, there are challenges in our lives that defy easy explanation, and even everyday life is often a struggle over finances, fatigue and complicated relationships. Any person of faith will allow the question “why?” to slip from his or her lips from time to time.

In fact, the Jewish and Christian scriptures are filled with faithful men and women who asked “why?” and who questioned God’s sense of timing and rhythm in managing the great and small moments in world and individual history.

I chaperoned a field trip recently for the eighth-grade class of Presque Isle’s Cunningham Middle School – a school that by the time you read this will have ceased to exist!

Fifty or so boys and girls and six chaperones spent three days at Lincolnville’s remarkable Tanglewood Camp and Learning Center, an outreach of Cooperative Extension. The time was filled with nature walks, watershed studies, environmental education and skits about human stewardship of the land.

One of our stops along the banks of the Ducktrap River was back in the woods where May’s heavy rains had created a number of “vernal pools,” temporary miniponds that arise each spring. (One student referred to them as “wicked big puddles.”) As a local naturalist explained, vernal pools are a critical habitat for certain species at particular points in their lives. Frogs and salamanders in particular rely upon the pools, which are free of fish and other predators, as an essential part of their reproductive cycles.

I found it interesting that the vernal pool is, by its very nature, only a temporary home to the amphibians that live there. As summer’s heat increases and the tadpoles mature into frogs, the oxygen content of the pool will decrease, and evaporation will constrict the space available to the various species that live there. In time, the vernal pool may completely disappear, forcing the young critters to find their own way in the strange new world of the forest floor that is, in fact, their home.

Perhaps one lesson of the vernal pool is that God’s creation has its own rhythm, that this world that “is not our home” nonetheless allows our souls to experience God’s goodness and mature through the giving and receiving of love and forgiveness, and by facing physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges. When the time is right, our growing souls will perhaps be ready to embrace the next step in our journey: leaving home, moving to another town, marrying in love, embracing the generations that follow ours, putting down our work for others to finish, and even facing death.

Whatever life-giving pools have begun to evaporate around us lately, nudging us forward to the next “big thing” in our spiritual journeys, the decision of faith is to trust the One who has provided for our needs in days past to bring us safely to our next earthly or even heavenly home.

Such transitions can be frightening and painful, but they are not unnatural and they do not mean that God is not present. My own questions of “why?” often have to do with human limitations and mortality, and a few moments by the vernal pool have not taken all of those questions away. Nonetheless, in the midst of life’s chaos, there is a gift of tranquility in trusting that “in God’s good time” we will discover the meaning of our life’s journeys.

The Rev. Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., is a United Methodist pastor in Presque Isle and a brother in the Order of St. Luke. He may be reached via tlbphd@yahoo.com. Voices is a weekly commentary by Maine people who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.