Patience & Navigation

We do well to wait upon the Lord. We may find His way inscrutable (hard to see or understand); we may find it way too slow (we are an impatient people). We may be tempted to respond to our difficulty in waiting of the Lord, but taking matters into our own hands to get the job done.

Proverbs 20 speaks to that impatience and warns of the ways we may stray.

21An inheritance gained hastily at the beginning
Will not be blessed at the end.

Patience is what we need, it may even be what the Lord wants us to find, to learn, to experience, and perhaps to perfect. But we can so clearly see what seems right in our own eyes! And there is so much evil around us, so many others blinded by their sins, doing the wrong things. Can't we help God along in His (and our) righteousness?

22Do not say, "I will recompense evil";
Wait for the LORD, and He will save you.

Maybe we want to re-evaluate, reconsider, re-create circumstances, maybe the ways we think and speak about situations, to rationalize how we might let the ends justify the means. Turn the enemy's tools against them, fight fire with fire.

23Diverse weights are an abomination to the LORD,
And dishonest scales are not good.

We can't achieve victory on our own, and we can;t do good by doing bad. The ends don't justify the means, in many ways the means are the end. God wants us to work on process, and let Him worry about the results.

24A man's steps are of the LORD;
How then can a man understand his own way?

Finally, if we can depend on Him for the very navigation of our Christian Walk, we don't need to understand where we're headed. Though we may see through the glass darkly or dimly, still we can trust in God that these little baby steps He has us take will leave us in the end where He wants us to arrive.