“The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.” (2 Peter 3:9 NLT)
Dr. Alexis Carrel received the Nobel Prize in 1912 for his work in vascular anastomosis. Yet, something even more pivotal happened to him in the preceding years. Dr. Carrel was raised in a Catholic family but fell away from his faith. During his early medical career, he had the opportunity to witness two separate medical miracles. The first was an instantaneous cure of tubercular peritonitis. Dr. Carrel followed up on this case for several months, because he had a hard time accepting that there was not a scientific explanation to the patient’s recovery. The second miracle happened when Dr. Carrell saw the sudden restoration of the sight of an 18-month-old boy who was born blind.
While the miracles are fascinating in themselves, what is more intriguing is this: Dr. Alexis Carrel remained an agnostic for 36 years after he witnessed and documented the first miracle. He could not bring himself to believe in anything supernatural. He thought of prayer as a natural, psychic force that may lead to inexplicable healing. It took decades for this skeptic to change his mind. A few years before he died, Dr. Carrel finally came back to faith.
Why do some people take so long to be conscious of God? The Lord isn’t really being slow about His promises for guidance. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent, to turn themselves around, to change from indifference to faith. Yet, God waits patiently for each of us to choose Him freely, in our own time.
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