Today I welcome guest blogger and author Sherry Shindelar, as she shares a devotional about Abraham, patience, and waiting.

Do you ever feel as if you’re on the tortoise track? That your progress toward your goals and dreams can be measured in turtle years instead of light years?

Patience is a virtue. One that I struggle with. It can be difficult to wait when we have our heart set on something. We get so set in our own plans, and they look right in our own eyes…

But then I think about Abraham. He was seventy-five years old in Genesis 12, when God said, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you … All people on earth will be blessed through you” (vs. 1-3).

Abraham believed God and left everything to follow God’s call. No surprise, right? Abraham is one of the superheroes of the faith. Of course, he listened, believed, and obeyed. Leave everything familiar behind, except for his wife, his nephew’s family, and his possession and go to a foreign land? No biggie. Only I bet it was terribly difficult because Abraham was a real man with real fears and concerns. (He really showed that side of himself down in Egypt when he told his wife to pretend to be his sister.)

Short-comings and all, Abraham was a human. Who believed God. It didn’t matter if he was seventy-five years old, if God said he was going to have a child and be the father to a nation, then it would be so. He left the familiar and followed the Lord’s leading.

But where was the baby boy God had promised? Several years later, Abraham questioned the Lord, and God replied “…. A son who is of your own flesh and blood will be your heir… Look up at the sky and count the stars— if indeed you can count them… So shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:4).

Abraham believed God.

Yet still no baby boy in the works. So Sarah came up with plan (as we often do) to hurry things along and make our dreams happen our away. She gave her servant, Hagar, to Abraham, and he fathered a son, Ishmael, through her. But that wasn’t God’s plan, and it caused a lot of conflict.

Thirteen years after Ishmael was born, God again spoke to Abraham and renewed his promise to make Abraham a father of many nations, but not through Ismael. At this point, Abraham was ninety-nine years old. A little weary on waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promise, Abraham laughed at thought.

Yet a year later, Isaac was born.

Abraham waited twenty-five years for God’s promise to be fulfilled. But when it happened, there was no doubt that it was God at work. God fulfilled His promises and His plans in His own perfect timing, all the way from Abraham to Jesus and even into today.

He is the same God today as He was thousands of years ago. Let us trust Him with our lives, our paths, and our goals: “And we know that in all things God works for the good for those who love Him who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

And remember: It was the tortoise who won the race.

About Sherry:

Originally from Tennessee and the Shenandoah Valley, Sherry Shindelar loves to take her readers into the past. She is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. Her novel, Shenandoah’s Daughter, is set in the Shenandoah Valley. When she isn’t busy writing, Sherry is an English professor working to pass on her love of writing. Sherry is an award winning author: who currently resides in Minnesota with her husband. She has recently completed a western novel set in 1860 Texas.

https://sherryshindelar.com/

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