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 before answering it. Nothing visible has changed across the whole of recorded history, and every generation that announced the end has been wrong so far.
His first answer is about the instrument doing the measuring. 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 is not yours. It makes no claim that the wait will be short, and Peter does not pretend otherwise.
His second answer gives the delay a purpose and a direction, and the direction is what usually gets dropped. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward. Toward us, the people doing the reading. Six verses on he says what to do with that: account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation. Paul says the same to a reader enjoying the delay: the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance. And Ezekiel has God saying it in the first person: I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.
There is a question inside this verse that Peter leaves alone. He is not willing that any should perish, and two verses earlier the same chapter has a day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. Both are his, two verses apart, and he makes no attempt to fit them together. Whatever you settle on there, you will be settling it without his help.
What he does with the delay is hand it to you as time. That is the offer, open where you are sitting: the day has not come, and the reason given is people who have not yet turned. You are welcome to be one of the reasons it is still waiting.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 158 is New Every Morning (Lamentations 3:22-23).