Streams in the Desert March 22 Daily Devotional

And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush ... saying ... I have seen the affliction of my people
which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now corn, I will send thee into Egypt (Acts 7.30, 32, 34).
That was a long wait in preparation for a great mission. When God delays, He is not inactive. He is getting ready His instruments, He is ripening our powers; and at the appointed moment we shall arise equal to our task. Even Jesus of Nazareth was thirty years in

privacy, growing in wisdom before He began His work. Dr. Jowett.
God is never in a hurry but spends years with those He expects to greatly use. He never thinks the days of preparation too long or
too dull.
The hardest ingredient in suffering is often time. A short, sharp
pang is easily borne, but when a sorrow drags its weary way through long, monotonous years, and day after day returns with the same
dull routine of hopeless agony, the heart loses its strength, and
without the grace of God, is sure to sink into the very sullenness
of despair. Joseph's was a long trial, and God often has to bum His lessons into the depths of our being by the fires of protracted
pain. "He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver," but He
knows how long, and like a true goldsmith He stops the fires the
moment He sees His image in the glowing metal. We may not see now the outcome of the beautiful plan which God is hiding in the shadow
of His hand; it yet may be long concealed; but faith may be sure that He is sitting on the throne, calmly waiting the hour when,
with adoring rapture, we shall say, "AD things have worked together
for good." like Joseph, let us be more careful to learn all the
lessons in the school of sorrow than we are anxious for the hour of
deliverance. There is a "need-be" for every lesson, and when we are
ready, our deliverance will surely come, and we shall find that we could not have stood in our place of higher service without the
very things that were taught us in the ordeal. God is educating us for the future, for higher service and nobler blessings; and if we
have the qualities that fit us for a throne, nothing can keep us
from it when God's time has come. Don't steal tomorrow out of God's hands. Give God time to speak to you and reveal His will. He is
never too late; learn to wait. --Selected.
He never comes too late; He knoweth what is best; Vex not thyself in vain; until He cometh--REST.
Do not run impetuously before the Lord; learn to wait His time: the minute-hand as well as the hour-hand must point the exact moment for action.