One last time

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9.

Sebin loves reading books. My mother and Hyemi’s mother shipped to us many Korean books and so we have many of them at our house. And Sebin just loves to read! But she doesn’t like reading them by herself. It’s kind of obvious because she cannot read. So whenever she wants to read, Sebin will pull out a book from the shelf and bring it to either one of us and we would read to her.

This is just the beginning. When we are done with the book, Sebin puts the book away and goes for the second book. She’s not done yet. She goes for the third book, and so on! She doesn’t stop! When it’s time for bed we tell her that we need to stop reading and go upstairs. She says no! Then we tell her, “Let’s read two more books and go to bed.” So Sebin brings a book. We say, “Two more books.” We read and then say, “One more book. This is the LAST book.” It seems Sebin doesn’t fully understand the word ‘last.’ When we are done with the last book, Sebin says, “One more last book!” We tell Sebin that is not what ‘last’ means but she doesn’t care. She has to read at least 3 more ‘last’ books and then finally goes to bed!

I wonder if that is God the other way around. To God, ‘last’ doesn’t mean ‘last.’ God is patient with us. He is ‘longsuffering’ toward us. He wants to give it another try with us because He is loving, merciful, and patient. God dearly wants to be with us that, even though when we mess up He says, “OK, one last time…” again and again. We are now at the last week of this year and we have a new year coming up within a week. We should look back at how much God has been patient with us in our mistakes and count the times He has said, “Ok, one last time.”