"These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die like fire and powder..."
"...Be patient, for the world is broad and wide."
Friar Laurence from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
This morning during my commute to work I heard the ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley on WORD FM, a nationally broadcast Christian radio network. The topic of Dr. Stanley's scripture message today was "God's Promise to Provide." One point that Stanley made clear to listeners is that all we need to do is ask God, and believe that our request has already been granted. He emphasized that once asked, however, we should leave our need in God's hands. We must restrain ourselves from interfering with God's time sequence for fulfilling that need. Like a child who lays his broken toy on his parent's lap and then runs back to play without concern, knowing with certainty that the toy will be fixed, so we must believe God will provide. When we lack the will-power to delay our gratification, Stanley warns of the missed opportunities God has planned for us while we wait. We may risk, for instance, not meeting a significant person or traveling to an inspiring location, all because we were too impatient to wait for God's timing. Also, if we fail to leave our needs in God's hands and rush to satisfy them before God's perfect timing, we may do more harm to a situation or hurt people in our rush to self-satisfy.
This obvious message of restraint and will-power from Dr. Stanley was revealed to me again in an email. Luminosity, a brain research center, shared the results of a behavioral study initiated by psychologist Walter Mischel on the power of delayed gratification called "The Marshmallow Experiment." In the 1960's, Mischel, a professor at Stanford University, conducted his scientific study on hundreds of children from ages four to five. In his experiment he brought each child into a private room, sat them down and placed a marshmallow in front of them. He told each child that he was leaving the room and they could eat the marshmallow if they desired, but if they could wait until he returned (approximately 15 minutes), they would receive a second marshmallow as a reward if the first one was not eaten - one treat now, or two treats later. 70% of the children in the study could not wait for the reward and ate the first marshmallow while only 30% had the desired will-power. Fourteen years later, as these children were studied into high school and college, it became obvious that the children who delayed gratification in the Marshmallow Experiment were the same groups that scored significantly higher in school and on SAT's. Forty years later, the study once again analyzed the people in the experiment. The same group of 30% proved to have maintained their self-control throughout their lives resulting in deeper friendships and increased levels of income in comparison to the marshmallow eaters! These masters of will-power have realized one of life's most powerful pieces of wisdom, delaying gratification leads to success. As Dr. Stanley explained, if we can just wait for God's timing, a whole wonderful world opens up as part of the journey.
The message repeated itself a third time during a dinner conversation with my husband. He shared with me an interesting story he had heard on NPR (National Public Radio). It was concerning the rapidly changing world we live in today. The story compared Julius Caesar's travel time in miles per hour to that of George Washington's travel time. Several thousand years later it took George Washington just as long to travel from one place to another as it took Julius Caesar to travel the same distance in his day. However, in just the last one hundred and fifty years, travel time has increased to beyond the sound barrier capacity, to lightening speed. The "need for speed" in our culture is undeniable. We want instant gratification, not only in commuting from one place to another, but in everything. This is the mindset of our culture, fast cash, fast food, fast weight-loss, fast shopping, fast energy, fast delivery, fast entertainment, etc. We want everything at our fingertips. I recently heard a report that the wave of the impending future is that companies will be placing computers in all of their electronic products so that the consumer can operate all of their home devices from their phones. This technology will allow us to command our coffee pots, our washing machines, our cars, our curling irons, our sprinkler systems, anything with a computer chip from our phones or iPads.
Many of us are caught in the web of keeping up with every new technological advancement. For instance, I barely learned how to use my first iPhone before I bought into the propaganda advertising all the bells and whistles on Apple's most recent new device. When will this consumer (consumption- yum, yum!) greed ever end? The more money companies make selling us their products, the more they spend trying to sell us more and more, mesmerizing us into believing that our desires can be satiated through their merchandise. "Buy now and you will be instantly gratified!"
Three very clear messages were revealed to me today, and all three were distinctly connected. I believe in divine revelations. Is God warning me, society, all of us? If humanity expects to continue to survive on this earth, we must learn to be satisfied, to wait on all things in the Lord's time. God has a reason for the season he chooses to provide. Titus 2:11-12 states, "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age." If we believe in the inspired words of St. Paul to Titus in the New Testament, we must realize that more often our desires and needs are of this earthly world; they do not help us grow closer to God or lead us to heaven.
In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence warned Romeo 3 times of his impatience, "Wisely and slow, they stumble who run fast; violent delights have violent ends; be patient for the world is broad and wide." Will our necessity for immediate gratification in all things "die like fire and powder" as the Friar's lines in Shakespeare warn? Will we meet the same demise as Romeo and Juliet? Shakespeare may well have been making a prophetic statement about society then as well as now. Our need for having immediate satisfaction is unquenchable. Our urgency to have our needs met "now" may, as Shakespeare most insightfully understood, soon prove to be our fatal end.
