Checking in with the righteous

I know a righteous woman, but I don’t get to see her very often because life is crazy busy. Last night, we got together and talked about each other’s lives and children. She has a son who has had learning disabilities since birth, and for years I have mentally bitten my fingernails over his future prospects. But, of course, his mom has done better than that: She has been praying for his future daily.

The last I heard, her son had been hired a year ago as an unpaid volunteer at a thrift store. My friend told me last night that after the year of observing him, the company offered her son a job as a paid employee, where he now works on the docks loading and unloading things, a position he enjoys because it is physical and because he gets on well with his fellow employees.

I came home from my coffee date invigorated in my faith because of God’s faithfulness to her. I suppose that if I had seen my friend every day or lived in her household, I would not have been as forcefully struck by what God has wrought in her and her son’s life. Perhaps, I would have been bogged down in the weariness and slowness of the wait. The works of God are often imperceptible on a day-to-day basis, but, like yeast in a loaf or like a flower just budding, best seen when you step back for a while.

Psalm 37 is a telescoping of a lifespan, to get beneath the daily blur to the essence of the spiritual principles quietly in operation in the respective lives of the righteous and the wicked. The latter seem to be the lucky ones, and it may appear that way for years; the former seem to be the ones to pity, and that also may go on for a long time. But the Lord stands outside of time and sees the end from the beginning instantaneously. Here is the view from heaven:

“Wait for the LORD and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land; you will look on when the wicked are cut off. … Mark the blameless and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace. But transgressors shall be altogether destroyed; the future of the wicked shall be cut off” (Psalm 37:34, 37-38).

Check in with your godly friends from time to time. You will be blessed.