Cherries for sale, two miles ahead!
Fresh-picked cherries for sale, one mile ahead!
Plump cherries for sale, ½ mile ahead!
Sweet cherries for sale, ¼ mile ahead!
Juicy cherries for sale, next exit!
My husband and I were en route from Southern California to my son’s August wedding in Oregon. It had been a long day of car travel when the road-side signs for Grandma Nana’s produce stand began popping up. It seemed a little late in the summer for cherry picking. But, Grandma Nana beckoned to us to come buy her delicious cherries with such enthusiasm that we were hopeful and helpless to resist the promise of one last taste of God’s seasonal bounty.
We exited off a little dirt road, dust flying as we snaked our way around the potholes to Grandma Nana’s stand, a little ramshackle shed in the middle of a large vacant field, and parked. We entered the little lean-to shack and were greeted with a grunt and a grumble from “Grandma Nana”-in actuality, a rotund, grizzled and grumpy old man. Sweat was dripping down his forehead which he wiped off with the hem of his floral apron. “Grandma Nana” waddled towards us, peeping through one squinting eye as smoke from his dangling cigarette assaulted it.
“We’d like to buy some cherries, please.” I said.
Grandma Nana harrumphed, “Don’t got no cherries! Ain’t cherry season!” “But… we got onions…”
Unlike those road-signs, we know that God’s Word is absolutely trustworthy, but we’ve all felt that He didn’t come through for us in a timely and/or appropriate way at one time or another. Consider that God’s Word, honor and integrity are on the line. His promises are the very heart of the Gospel. What He promises, He must deliver. All the promises of God in Jesus Christ are “Yes” and “Amen”! The catch is that He keeps His promises on His terms, by His methods and in His time.
Lest we forget, Isaiah 55:8-10 reminds us that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. His ways are higher than our ways. Being omniscient…knowing everything, He has an infinite perspective that we mortals don’t have and an eternal purpose we mortals can’t see…yet. So, when He requires that we wait on a promise, we know there’s a good reason. Father knows best!
Imagine waiting for God’s promise for 70 years. Jeremiah 25 journals the 70 years that the Children of Israel had to wait for God’s promise to be fulfilled. And God required that they make the best of a bad situation at the same time until He freed them from Babylonian captivity and let them return them to their beloved Jerusalem. Daniel 10:1 records that “God’s promise was true but the appointed day of fulfillment was long.” Time does not nullify God’s promises. His Word is true. It will come to pass. Count on it! Now, that’s a promise.
“Has God said, and will He not do it?” “Has He spoken, and will He not make it good? “
Numbers 23:19