2 Peter 3:8-9 “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”       

First, let’s note that Peter is not saying the eternal and all-knowing God is incapable of telling time or communicating about it. Some people want to take this passage and apply it to early Bible history like the creation account. But they are missing what the words actually say. Peter does not say that with the Lord a thousand years is a day, and a day is a thousand years. From his position in eternity, Peter says, days and thousands of years have a similar feel. They are “like” each other. You yourselves know that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass. A year flies by like a couple of weeks. But you haven’t lost the ability to tell the difference between the two.

The point is, people often have to wait a long time for God to keep his promises…from our perspective. God promises Abraham and Sarah a son when they are 75 and 65 years old, respectively. Isaac isn’t born until a quarter of a century later. The Lord tells Noah to prepare for a flood. It’s 120 years before it begins to rain. The Lord sees Israel’s oppression in Egypt. He hears them crying out in their slavery. But it is a couple of hundred years before he sends Moses to deliver them. From here on earth all of these examples seemed like a long time. From up in heaven it didn’t seem very long at all. But the Lord was fully aware of every year, every hour, every second that passed along the way.

We need to stop judging God for the way he runs history–particularly, the way he runs our personal history. We pray about a personal problem, a chronic condition, a family member on the wrong path. Years pass, and nothing happens. We are concerned about what is going on in our country, or in our world. We take it to God’s throne in prayer. It seems our pleas are met with silence.

But what do we think we know about the bigger picture of our future, or our world? Let’s say you were Lara Clarke or Rob Herzog on September 11, 2001. They both took trains to work in New York City. Each of them was delayed on the way to the station and missed their trains. Now they are going to be late to work. No doubt they felt some irritation and anxiety about their situation. Why this, and why today? But this was September 11, 2001, and both of them worked in the World Trade Center. Their one hour delays saved their lives. By the time they got to work, the towers had already been hit by the airplanes.

Peter assures us that the Lord knows what he is doing with the timing of his return. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.” He is not procrastinating because he doesn’t want to return, or he doesn’t care. He isn’t delayed because something is in his way, and he doesn’t have the power to get past it. He isn’t getting old and forgetful. He hasn’t changed his mind.

“He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” The Lord wants to maximize the number of people he can save. Every day he delays is another day we can preach the gospel, another day we can introduce others to Jesus, another day someone can discover forgiveness at the cross, and eternal life at Jesus’ empty tomb. Don’t you know someone who still hasn’t found Jesus?

It’s like the action movie where the boat is waiting at the dock, or the plane is waiting on the runway, or the car is waiting with the engine running. Our heroes are running for their lives, and a band of villains is in hot pursuit. The pilot or the driver is waiting, stretching the time, delaying until the last moment so that the last member of the team can jump on board and be whisked to safety.

The Lord is waiting for the last member of the team to jump on board before he comes on the Last Day to whisk us all away to safety. So don’t misunderstand God’s timing as we wait for the day of the Lord.