Moses Delayed to Come Down

The incident with the golden calf happened after “the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount” (Exodus 32:1). The people were waiting for Moses to come down from the Mount, he delayed, and then in their anxiety and impatience for their prophet to return they went to Aaron and said: “Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.” In a Come, Follow Me podcast discussing this chapter, John Hilton III said, “I think a great question for us to ask ourselves is, are you, am I, are we faithful in the delay? Moses has been gone a long time. And three times the people have specifically covenanted everything that God says, we'll do. We saw that in Exodus 19, we see it in Exodus 24. So they have just recently said, we're going to do everything God says, but now with the delay, they're losing hope. And I don't want to be too critical of them. I see this in myself…. And so I think it's worth just kind of pausing for a moment and thinking about what do I do in the middle when there's that delay?” I think this is indeed a powerful question to ask ourselves. After we make covenants and are waiting for the blessings of the Lord to come, what do we do when we feel those are delayed? How do we deal with righteous blessings that we earnestly seek but which seem to elude us? These Israelites chose to break their covenants because of the delay and made graven images contrary to the law they had just received—how do we respond when we feel we are waiting far longer than we should have to? What do we do with the delay?

                Two scriptures come to mind as I think about how we can handle the delays of our life. One is from Mormon as he wrote about the restoration of the children of Israel in the last days: “And ye may know that the words of the Lord, which have been spoken by the holy prophets, shall all be fulfilled; and ye need not say that the Lord delays his coming unto the children of Israel” (3 Nephi 29:2). Though we may feel that the “Lord delays his coming,” in reality we can know that all His words will be fulfilled and He will come right on time—His time. We need not say that the Lord delays His coming to us in our lives because we can trust that He knows the right timing for everything. The other scriptural phrase that comes to mind is Isaiah’s to “wait upon the Lord.” He wrote, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). When we work through the delays in our life, we can “wait upon the Lord” and trust Him. We can wait with a focus on coming unto Him and receiving His strength in our lives even if the thing we are hoping for itself doesn’t come. We can say with the prophet: “And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him” (Isaiah 8:17). We may feel that He figuratively hides His face from us, but even then we can wait upon Him and actively “look for him” in our lives. As we look to see His hand in our lives we will find the truth of Nephi’s statement: “The tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith” (1 Nephi 1:20). Like the children of Israel we may be tempted to find “other gods” and break our covenants when we face delays, but if we will instead wait upon the Lord we will find His tender mercies and realize that He does not delay His coming to us at all.