Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 158 · June 7
Not Slack
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
"Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." Peter prints the complaint in full before he answers it. The scoffers' point is simple: nothing they can see has changed. And it is true that every generation which has announced a date for the end has so far been wrong.
Peter's first answer is about who holds the clock: "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." The clock belongs to God. Peter makes no claim that the wait will be short, and he does not pretend it will be.
His second answer gives the delay a reason and a direction, and the direction is the part we usually skip. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward." Us-ward means toward us, the very people reading the letter. A few verses later Peter tells us what to make of it: "account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation." Paul says the same to a reader who is taking God's patience for granted: "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance." And in Ezekiel, God says it Himself: "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live."
There is a hard question inside this verse, and Peter leaves it alone. The Lord is "not willing that any should perish," and yet two verses earlier the same chapter speaks of "the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." Peter sets both truths down, two verses apart, and makes no attempt to fit them together for us. We can leave with God what Peter leaves unexplained.
What Peter does with the delay is hand it to you as time. The offer is open right where you are sitting. The day has not yet come, and the reason he gives is that there are still people who have not turned to God. You are welcome to be one of the reasons it is still waiting, and to turn to Him now.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 158 is New Every Morning (Lamentations 3:22-23).