On the Burden of Being God

As I start each delicious morning in quiet with God in prayer and Bible study, I often warm up with “appetizers” in the form of very short devotional pieces.  Those of you who have followed me here know that I am a huge fan of Charles Spurgeon, so among those short readings are usually his.  This morning’s "Morning" entry (November 23) centers around “Fellowship with Him,” as found in I John 1:6.

One of Spurgeon’s lines is “…He desires that the saints be with Him where He is…”  This got me to thinking.  I recognize that line instantly from Jesus magnificent intercessory prayer in John 17, which details exquisitely and in detail how He thinks about us:

“Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me,

be with me where I am so that they may see the glory

which You have given Me before the foundation of the world.” 

John 17:24

And not only about how He thinks about us, but this prayer gives deep insight into how God will bring about the culmination of His entire plan from an inside view – the very words of Jesus, God the Son, as He labors in prayer to God, the Father, about… us!

Then, THAT got me thinking and meditating on the incredible patience of God and on the burden of being God.

The Astonishing Reality: God Endures

Think about it.  He is God.  He has all power at His disposal; He is the source of all power.  He could have simply snapped His fingers and instantly set all things right.  He could have taken the mess that was the fallen creation just before the flood and simply thrown it away to start all over… or, not, and just be done with it. 

“The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth,

and He was grieved in His heart.”

Genesis 6:5-6

Oh, the incredible mystery of God!

When Jesus uttered those words as recorded in John chapter 17, He had the cross before Him, and while that would accomplish the great purpose of his coming to earth as a man – securing our redemption – the completion of all He desires is something He is still patiently waiting for. 

Scripture reveals that God does not only “wait,” but He endures through the unfolding of His plan.

“What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction…”

Romans 9:22

God’s Patience Is Not Passive — It Is Purposeful, Active, and Painful

“Endured with much patience” — that is a staggering phrase. It implies that God bears something.  He experiences a kind of divine “burden-bearing” for the sake of His redemptive purposes.

God’s Foreknowledge Does Not Diminish His Suffering — If Anything, It Deepens It

When Jesus was praying to His Father about those of us who believe and love Him, He knew the road ahead would be long and arduous – beyond the cross, the grave, and the resurrection.  It still is. 

Think of it!  Every day, the Lord endures the full misery of a fallen world: every act of cruelty and violence, every injustice where the powerful crush the weak; every secret abuse, every broken vow, every distortion of His good design; every war-ravaged city, every corrupt judgment, every lonely widow and abandoned child; every disease cell dividing, every body failing, every mind unraveling; every addiction, betrayal, and quiet despair; every hidden tear His people shed and every sin they stumble into again.  He witnesses all of it—intimately (Psalm 11:4)—and, again, “endures with much patience” (Romans 9:22), restraining His wrath so mercy can finish its work. And He will continue to bear it until the day He breaks open the skies—“the Lord Himself will descend” (1 Thessalonians 4:16)—and declares over a renewed creation, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:1–5).

God’s Patience Is Not Powerlessness — It Is Purposeful Love

God’s patience is not powerlessness—it is purposeful, active, redemptive love.  We feel the tension of asking, “Why doesn’t God just fix everything now? Why allow suffering, evil, and injustice to continue?”  

Scripture gives the answer plainly: His patience serves His saving purposes (2 Peter 3:9).  He withholds immediate judgment so that mercy can run its full course.  And this is where the mystery deepens, because God is not passive in His waiting—He longs, He waits, He desires.  Not because He is unable or indifferent, but because He is accomplishing something infinitely better than instantaneous intervention.

The LORD’s slowness to anger is not a flaw or a delay; it is part of His very glory, as He revealed of Himself in Exodus 34:6.  

“The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.”

God’s patience is an expression of His heart—a love strong enough to wait.  Our own experience with waiting patiently, enduring the difficult situation at hand?Perhaps this provides a mere glimpse into what it is like to be God; all magnified to the max degree. 

God’s Patience Magnifies the Glory of the Final Consummation and Our Ultimate Redemption!

All of this divine patience—this long endurance of human sin, sorrow, and rebellion—only serves to magnify the glory of what is coming!  Scripture tells us that creation itself is groaning, straining forward like a woman in childbirth, waiting eagerly for the moment when God’s children are revealed in glory and the world is finally set free from its corruption (Romans 8:19–22).   Can’t you just feel that vibe?  Our own groaning joins that chorus as we look toward our full redemption, longing for everything that is broken to be mended and everything bent to be made straight.

Just think about it!  God Himself is waiting, too—not reluctantly, not begrudgingly, but in love, allowing mercy its full work so that no part of His redemptive plan is left unfinished. When the waiting ends, it will not be anticlimactic; it will be breathtaking.  His patience will make the final unveiling of the new heavens and the new earth (Revelation 21:1–5) all the more radiant, because we will see with our own eyes what His longsuffering has accomplished: the world remade, justice perfected, sorrow banished, and every tear wiped away by His own hand.

Our Place in the Story: Learning to Trust the Divine Patience

If God Himself waits—patiently, purposefully, lovingly—then surely His people can learn to rest within that patience. We live in a world that demands instant resolutions, quick deliverance, and immediate clarity; yet the God we serve is the God who works slowly, steadily, and perfectly through time. His timing is never rushed and never delayed. When we struggle to understand why He tarries, why our prayers seem unanswered, or why suffering persists, it invites us into deeper fellowship with His heart.

We begin to see that waiting is not an interruption to His plan—rather, it's an integral part of His plan. And often, it is in the waiting that He forms us, deepens us, sanctifies us. Scripture assures us that “the patience of our Lord is salvation” (2 Peter 3:15), meaning that every moment He holds back His hand is another moment of mercy, another soul redeemed, another thread of His perfect tapestry woven into place. Trusting His patience is trusting His character. It is believing that the God who bears all things sees all things, knows all things, and will, in His perfect time, set all things right.

The Burden and Beauty of Being God

And so we come full circle. When we speak of the patience of God, we are not speaking of a passive waiting or a distant tolerance; we are speaking of the divine willingness to bear the weight of a fallen world until the fullness of His redemptive purposes is complete.  The burden of being God is not weakness, but love. It is the love that chooses to endure every sorrow humanity suffers, every sin humanity commits, every cry humanity utters, until the day all things are made new.

It is the love that held Jesus to the cross and the love that now holds Him in patient anticipation at the right hand of the Father, “waiting until His enemies be made a footstool for His feet” (Hebrews 10:13). And it is the love that holds us, too. We cannot comprehend more than a sliver of what He sees, feels, or carries, but we can rest in this: He is doing nothing less than the absolute best, in the absolute best way, for the absolute best end.

And when the waiting ends—when the trumpet sounds, the sky splits, and He wipes away every tear—we will understand fully that the long road of His patience was the very road by which He brought us safely home.

In Closing:

I want to share one of my very favorite musical pieces of all time — Samuel Barber’s Agnus Dei (the choral setting of his famous Adagio for Strings). I have listened to this piece more times than I can count over the years; it never fails to quiet my spirit and lift my heart into a place of reverence and wonder. It captures, in sound, something of the aching beauty of God’s long-suffering love — the unresolved harmonies that feel like divine waiting, the slow ascent that mirrors the patience of God, the luminous resolution that hints at the glory to come. As you listen, let it be a musical meditation on the God who endures, who waits, and who loves with a depth we can scarcely comprehend.