The Delayed Chariot: God's Hidden Design in Tarrying

Sisera's mother looked from her window, watching the road: "Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?" (Judges 5:28). Her hope had curdled into despair. She did not yet know her son lay dead, struck down by Jael's tent peg while sleeping in Heber's tent.

This mother's anguished question has echoed through the moral campaigns of consecrated life. When Yahweh withdraws into His pavilion of cloud, withholding both Himself and His blessings, our hearts struggle with the same wondering cry: "Why does His chariot tarry?"

Yet God's delay is never abandonment. Unlike Sisera—a dismounted general and slain warrior—Yahweh never falls. He always maintains sublime design in His tarrying. His reasons remain often hidden, left for us to discern slowly, patiently. He delays to do us good, not to taunt; to check our impatience and correct our hurrying spirit.

Consider the universal Church ecclesia—the Church militant breathing fervently for nineteen centuries: "Thy kingdom come." In her longing for complete victory, universal regeneration, when truth shall reign in every land and Christ shall be enthroned in every heart, she plaintively asks, "Why does my Lord delay His coming?" Yet slowness of progress proves nothing. Are not the greatest works of Yahweh and man the fruit of slow processes? The golden harvest does not wave after a single night's growth. When He comes, His coming shall be as the morning—fresh, fragrant, and radiant.