Day 7 (Dec 3) The Causes of Delay & God Our Preserver

The Causes of Delay. 

1.  If the wickedness of the world in heathen times was so great, how was it that the coming of the Redeemer was so long delayed?  To this question we can only give one answer with absolute certainty, that it was so decreed by Almighty God in His infinite wisdom.  We cannot hope in this life to comprehend the mysteries of the providence of the Most High.  We can only humbly bow our heads and say that the Redeemer came when God so willed, and that what God wills is necessarily the best. 

2.  Yet, we can at least form some kind of conjecture as to the causes of delay.  God works by natural means.  In order that the religion of Jesus should spread all over the world by the ordinary working of the laws that govern the affairs of men, it was convenient that the world should be subject to one central power.  This was never the case until, at the time of Christ’s nativity, the Roman Empire was mistress of the world.  Thus God prepares the way for His designs of mercy, and arranges the world’s events according to His will, yet without forcing the wills of men. 

3.  There was another reason for the long delay.  It was to teach us that God does nothing hurriedly.  He always waits before putting into execution His decrees.  In this He wishes us to imitate Him.  The eternal wisdom of the Most High needs no time for deliberation.  His works are not gradually perfected, or improved on second thoughts.  But ours are, and the slow action of the providence of God should impress upon us the importance of waiting before we act, and considering and reconsidering all our plans.

 

God our Preserver. 

In Him we live and move and are. (Acts xvii. 28.) 

1.  If God had merely created us and then left us to ourselves, there would have been some excuse for our forgetting how completely we belong to Him.  But we are not like a picture that the artist finishes off and then leaves to itself.  God continues throughout our whole life the act of creation in the shape of preservation.  Without this we should at once lapse into our previous nothingness.  We depend upon Him for our being as the rivulet depends on the spring, or the smoke on the fire. 

2.  But we not only live in Him, but we also move in Him.  He co-operates with our every action.  We cannot lift a hand or move a finger unless He not only sanctions the act but actually helps us to perform it.  Every breath we breathe, every pulsation of our heart, depends on God’s co-operation.  How completely dependent we are on Him!  How careful should we be that our every action is one suitable to the divine cooperation!  

3.  God does more than this.  He not only preserves us, but tends us with watchful care, delivers us from dangers, warns us when we are going wrong, shows a never-failing interest in us, and an unceasing desire for our happiness.  For all this we are dependent on Him!  What folly, then, to neglect one to whom we owe everything!  

 

Pray for a sense of continual dependence on God.

 


This article, Day 7 (Dec 3) The Causes of Delay & God Our Preserver is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/devotional/the-catholic-daily/advent-short-meditations-and-the-great-truths/day-7-dec-3-the-causes-of-delay-god-our-preserver/
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