Delay

Sometimes there are those verses, words that show up like a stubborn tropical rain that stretches taut across the cycle of the moons and there’s no getting around it, no avoiding the persistent throb. 

Jairus. I heard a whisper of that man’s name a few months ago, my mind swift to bring up long lost Sunday school lessons about just. having. more. faith. Twice, we dissected and digested the story in the frigid theatre on Sunday mornings. Once, that soul friend and I discussed it perched on top of the desks for too long into the school night. It even showed up on here back when the days were short and the season of advent dawned.

And now this! Of all the stories handed to me to expound and nurture young souls this very week: A Little Girl and a Poor Frail Lady.

I’ve read the story before. I knew of the sickness and petition, blood and power, and even “Talitha Cumi,” the supernatural raising of lost atoms back into real, living existence. 

But, it took a bit more soaking and a bit more praying to slip on Jairus’ shoes, strained and dusty, to sit in the delay. Live it, feel it, own it.

The delay.

"You’ve come to help and it all seems like it’s going to work and things will be made new, but now You’ve failed me. You’ve chosen to bless someone else over me and I’m disheartened. Angry. I’m ready to mourn my loss because You are just too late and my life stretches bitter ahead and it’s time for You to go."

Ah, I know it. Aren’t those my very own words from very raw places?

Delays can douse spirits and sever relationships and offer excuses for escape because Someone has first ostensibly left the gruesome scene without any remnant of hope.

And as I sit in the honesty of it all, I know deep down what is true—what Romans 8 has taught and Psalm 103 and that string of stories in 1 Samuel.

That delays often bring greater testimonies, whether that’s on this side of glory or not.

That it’s not about mustering more faith, something I could never accomplish on my own. It’s about being needy and having blind-mustard-seed-faith in the right person and making space for the miraculous. To hold the expectations high and close, but with open hands.

That I must rest in the fact that his testimony and character have never once failed, even when the whole of the world bays in indignation that I have every right to be numbed by his silence.  

And so the clinging and trusting come in great movements when my eyes are on a Person rather than the perpetual timelines and emotions that I know so easily unravel. 

If Jairus had stopped looking with a ridiculous, unreasonable hope on his unwavering, unexpected Lord, he would have never witnessed a raising from the dead. They ate and laughed and things were never the same. And maybe, just maybe, in the next delay their hope would be surer and foundation that much richer.