How Much Longer?

Music is powerful. Often a line in a song can awaken emotions within me that spoken word can’t, including the pain in my heart that I’d rather ignore.

The song “How He Loves” is like that in my life. The line “When all of a sudden/I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory” aggravates a bitter wound in me. You see, I don’t know what being ‘unaware of my afflictions’ is like. I wish I did, I really do. I can’t just ignore my wheelchair. The best I can do is grin and bear it until I am healed. I try to focus on God’s love as the song invites me to do, but with each passing day as I wait for healing, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Romans 12:12 says:

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” (NIV)

I know I haven’t mastered this yet. I’m not sure I can be patient in my affliction much longer. So what is the answer?

When Jesus was on earth, he healed people who had been sick for a long time. One woman had been bound with a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years (Luke 13: 10-17)He healed one man at a pool who had been sick for thirty-eight years. (John 5:1-15)

These are just two examples of how Jesus intervened in the lives of desperate people. He empathizes with the fact that I don’t always understand His timing and that I have an earnest desire to escape my affliction. He wants me to persevere as I wait for breakthrough. He demonstrates this in a parable in Luke 18.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

(Luke 18:1-8, NIV)

Even though I can’t ignore my affliction, I can continually petition God for healing. He is a just and gracious Father who hears the prayers of his children and answers them. This is the truth I cling to in this ever lengthening time of waiting. My God is faithful and He will not fail me!