Streams in the Desert - Oct 18

Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be . . . mistreated four hundred years. But . . . afterward they will come out with great possessions. (Genesis 15: 13– 14)

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I can be sure that part of God’s promised blessing to me is delay and suffering. The delay in Abraham’s lifetime that seemed to put God’s promise well beyond fulfillment was then followed by the seemingly unending delay experienced by Abraham’s descendants. But it was indeed only a delay— the promise was fulfilled, for ultimately they did “come out with great possessions.”

God is going to test me with delays, and along with the delays will come suffering. Yet through it all God’s promise stands. I have His new covenant in Christ, and His sacred promise of every smaller blessing that I need. The delays and the suffering are actually part of the promised blessings, so may I praise Him for them today. May I “be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Ps. 27: 14).
~Charles Gallaudet Trumbull

Unanswered yet the prayer your lips have pleaded
In agony of heart these many years?
Does faith begin to fail? Is hope departing?
And think you all in vain your falling tears?
Say not the Father has not heard your prayer;
You will have your desire sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet? No, do not say ungranted;
Perhaps your work is not yet wholly done.
The work began when first your prayer was uttered,
And God will finish what He has begun.
If you will keep the incense burning there,
His glory you will see sometime, somewhere.
Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered,
Its feet are firmly planted on the Rock;
Amid the wildest storms it stands undaunted,
Nor shakes before the loudest thunder shock.
It knows Omnipotence has heard its prayer,
And cries, “It will be done”— sometime, somewhere.
~Ophelia G. Browning

Reference

Cowman, L. B. E.; Reimann, Jim (2008-09-09). Streams in the Desert: 366 Daily Devotional Readings (p. 394). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

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