Waiting will always be hard. But there’s an ironic twist to waiting I believe we all understand: unaware waiting is easier than understood waiting. For instance, the days leading up to a vacation can simultaneously seem like of the slowest and most hectic days of the year. There’s so much to do and at the same time the beginning of the time off can feel like it will never arrive. On the other hand, if someone unexpectedly asks you to go somewhere great or surprises you with a great gift, you don’t struggle with any of the anticipation stress that a planned moment comes with. In the grand scheme of things our lives are on a collision course with both things we know and things things we don’t, but the understood waiting is typically more difficult because to know what is coming means we also know we aren’t there yet.

The Christian life is described in the New Testament as being “awakened” from sleep (Ephesians 5:14). And what is it to be awakened if not to become aware? We become aware of the promises of God when we come to know Jesus and His salvation. But the cost of knowing is…well…knowing. For example, if I never knew the beating Jesus took was somehow connected to the healing of my life (Isaiah 53:5), then I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be frustrated when it doesn’t happen as quickly or “efficiently” as I’d like. And there’s a story at the beginning of the Bible that seems to indicate this isn’t something that just started with us in our impatient culture, but something that was on display from the earliest moments of earth’s life.

It’s interesting to me that the fourth day of creation was the day God created the sun and the moon and the stars. And when he created those, presumably, the way that we understand seasons and days and time and cycles were created. Imagine for a moment how different life would be without these astronomical fixtures. There are the obvious needs for a livable climate, photosynthesis, evaporation, tidal movement and a many other functions. But also the effect on time as we know it is an amazing line of thought.

What’s even more interesting from the biblical account is that God references the evening and the morning before the creation of the sun and the moon. Which means God understood the reality of the concept of the cycle of day and night before he created the structures and tools that would define what we understand as day and night. 

So the idea of morning and evening, for God, were not dependent on the presence of the physical structures we need to understand them. What is morning for us without the sunrise? What is evening for us without the cycles of the moon? Though we take the relationship for granted quite a bit, we rely on the fourth day of creation as a baseline to understand daily life. And yet God did not need those “things,” that star, for evening and morning to be just as real and just as relevant.

This got me thinking about how this could continue to be true in my life even now. What if there are some things in my life that God is going to bring the tools and the structures for later even though he has already created the concept and reality now? 

• What truths am I already living in that I just don’t have language for? 
• What future has God planned for me and spoken over me that I have yet to walk in the present reality of?

And maybe one of the most interesting things about this is how it feels to know there’s something more without having the context or the symbols or the language or the technical structure to define what that “more“ is. But that’s where this begins to sound a bit like the language of faith. The “evidence of things not yet seen” could be a beautiful description of evening and morning on the first day, long before sun and moon on the fourth day.

Maybe one of the primary sources of Christian anticipation (and if we’re honest some of our frustration is knowing there’s something more before we have the ability to define it or describe it or understand it.

For life to be lived in its fullest expression we need a fourth day of creation just as much as we need a first. We can only live so long under the concept of “evening and morning“ before we have a deep need for the sun and moon so we can understand them. The world cannot live indefinitely at the level of concept, and personally I can’t either. There has to be reality, there has to be a fire breathing star and a dusty ball of rock to help me live in the reality that God has created. Sometimes there has to be physical reality, tangible evidence that helps me process conceptual truth and prophetic declaration.

I know the just will walk by faith. But I also know faith becomes sight. And the greatest frustrations of my Christian life take place between these two. What I am not believing for doesn’t create any angst in me. But those things I believe God has promised can create profound dissonance in me the longer they exist at the level of concept, waiting to become reality.

Thankfully the Scriptures assure me that there is always a fourth day reality to complete all of God’s first day promises. Genesis chapter 3 speaks of the good news of a Savior. Long before – 4000 years roughly – Jesus the Messiah would show up in Bethlehem there was a proclamation of the reality of good news and salvation. God knew it, God proclaimed it, God promised it. But much like the creation week, a first day wasn’t enough, there had to be a fourth day at some point. There had to be a moment when the reality of good news moved from prophecy and promise to flesh and blood.

Some of us are living first day lives. Knowing that there’s more and trying to live our lives in alignment with those promises even before we’ve held them. Others of us have testimonies of the God who brought a fourth day reality to life in them, in their family, in their physical body or in any number of other ways. But regardless of where we find ourselves on that spectrum, there is more in Genesis 1 than just the story of how some things “got here.” In this well-worn story is the account of a God whose perfect timing and unending faithfulness always come together. Which means for those of us who are sitting in day one there’s no doubt that day four is coming. For those of us standing on faith and trusting God’s promises, there’s coming a moment when our life will look exactly like God’s promise.

Hold on tight between days one and four. A little further on in the Bible there’s another, pretty important, Bible story about what God can accomplish in three days. If God can reveal the promise of salvation by moving from a cross of death to an empty tomb what can’t He do in our lives if we will keep walking things out?