15 | January | 2014

Federal Express DC-10-30F; N313FE, April 1990/AAG (Photo credit: Aero Icarus)

Federal express is an awesome service. They can urgent deliver, same day deliver, overnight, deliver in 2 nights, deliver in 5 days and include delivery commitment. They can deliver on a specific day and even deliver at a specific time. Imagine if God worked liked federal express. Then we could put in our orders and choose the day the time and sit back and relax. When the day and hour would come, we would have it. All the anxiety, all the waiting and wondering, and all the doubt would be gone. Unfortunately God does not work like that. He has his own delivery system, angels included. He sure is capable of handling urgent deliveries but he can even do better than same day delivery. God can do instant delivery and He is definitely committed every time. However sometimes God’s delivery date is nowhere near ours and that’s when all the trouble begins. We forget that God is not a delivery service that we can hire at 9.99 a service or 15.99 a service or at any price. We can’t tell God when, where or how. He makes the final decision. Sarah was one customer that had not read the fine print.

Sarah was 89 years old when she was hearing again that she was going to have a baby.(Genesis 17:15-18, Genesis 21:1-7) First problem was her age and the second problem was that she had never had a baby. When God makes a promise sometimes it’s hard to believe or accept. Other times we get so anxious we want to see those promises delivered over night or even the same day. Unfortunately God is not federal express. He is not about to rush an order just to make us happy.Sarah decided to rush things and gave God some help. She presented Hagar her servant as a surrogate mother. (Genesis 16:1-2) Fast forward some years and we find Sarah insecure and jealous. Regrettably Sarah makes the harsh decision to send her away with her son and little else. God in his mercy provides for them.(Genesis 21:8-21) But what of the devastation of being cast out from your home, and Ishmael forever separated from his father, because Sarah decided to help God.

Even when we know God has something for us we have to seek His guidance and wait for His direction. God will surely show us when and how to take action. In Sarah’s case God only required that she wait. If we don’t want to wait we can still use Federal Express, but last time I checked miracles were not on their list of services.