Right On Time

December 24th

Christmas Eve

Right On Time

I have a silver watch that ticks on my wrist and there are days when it feels like a draining chain, hand-cuffing me to rush and hurry and breathless keeping up.

We’ve always had a strange relationship time, we humans. Partly perhaps because part of us is timeless… made for another time altogether. My dad passed away from cancer last year and eternity suddenly felt so close. My mum is now 80. She was pondering a while ago how strange it is to think of herself as an older lady.

Perhaps the anti-age industry is actually subconsciously built on a truth. The deep truth that human beings are eternal beings, created to live on beyond this world.

“He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

The book of Ecclesiastes sets our clocks ticking to the times of God, an eternal clock that we seldom understand. A clock where everything is held to time…

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

     a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

    a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

    a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

    a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

    a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil?  I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11

God’s timing is often beyond our imagining and understanding, like eternity in our hearts, but one thing we can be sure of. It exists. Scripture is like a big clock ticking through the story of God, unfolding the story of His involvement in time. With us.

Interestingly enough, though God’s timing is at work all around us, we humans have a difficult time comprehending it. And sometimes things that really don’t seem like God’s timing at all turn out to be His perfect timing in the long run. Sometimes the very long run.

Mary and Joseph. The news of their need to travel to Bethlehem while Mary was heavily pregnant must have felt like a blow. Like everything was out of time, out of kilter, spinning off course.

“In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.” Luke 2:1-4

And the timing of events preceding this blow must have also felt out of step. The timing all off, all wrong.

“He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.” Luke 2:5

This line lying innocently in the centre of the Christmas story reads like a benign detail to us, but to a first century Jew it would have been scandalous. Mary and Joseph were betrothed but not married. Mary’s pregnancy was a violation of Jewish religious law. Their community and probably their extended family would have struggled with the news of their pregnancy and it is highly likely they were both ostracised for it. Oh how Mary must have wished it might have been different, Easier. More comfortable. Better timing.

I wonder if Mary’s heart felt weighed down as she witnessed Elizabeth bring John into the world surrounded by neighbours and relatives all sharing her joy. Did Mary feel the weight of her dawning realisation that her own experience would be much lonelier. Harder. Full of misunderstanding and rejection? The timing all off? Too soon. Not slow enough.

Elizabeth’s timing must have looked so good through Mary’s eyes.

“When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.” Luke 1:57-58

However Elizabeth and Zechariah might not have agreed. They might have felt God’s timing was very slow for their child to arrive. They might have wished God’s timing had been very different. Sooner. Not soon enough.

God’s timing is often beyond our imagining and understanding, like eternity in our hearts, but a great bewilderment in our minds.

It may have taken Elizabeth and Zechariah a while to see that God’s timing for them wasn’t just about delivering a baby. It was about delivering a miracle. A miracle child that was part of a long story pointing to another miracle about to be delivered.

In Mary and Joseph’s eyes God’s timing for Elizabeth and Zechariah’s baby’s arrival must have looked preferable. No Community rejection. Not arduous week-long journey. They might have wished God’s timing for them had been different. Everything would have been simpler had they already been married, quieter, less scandalous. Less of a miracle of course, but easier. And this trek to Bethlehem! What sort of plan is that?

But God’s timing for them wasn’t simply about delivering a baby. It was about delivering a baby born King as long awaited. A baby born in the city of Kings as foretold. A baby born miraculously to a Virgin as prophesied. A baby born into the house and line of David as promised.

Every miracle costs. No miracle arrives into comfortable situations, they arrive because we need them or because God planned them.

We often set our watches by time determinants such as convenience, comfort or financial situation. But God, His timing has much more to do with His long unfolding story, than immediate human convenience. Scripture repeatedly speaks about ‘appointed times’, especially through the prophets (Daniel 8:19, Daniel 11:27, Daniel 11:29, Daniel 11:35, Habakkuk 2:3). It is clear that the demons understand that there is an appointed time for their final demise (Matthew 8:29). And Jesus clearly understood that His death was in God’s timing alone, a time appointed from before the world was made (Matthew 26:18).

God appoints time.

“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.’

Galatians 4:4

“he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfilment – to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”

Ephesians 1:9-10

Someone once said ‘God takes a long time to act suddenly’. The point is though that He acts. In Time. On time.

His time.

God’s timing is often beyond our imagining and understanding, like eternity in our hearts, but a great bewilderment in our minds.

When He seems to be unfolding things in a timing we would not choose. Trust Him. There’s a bigger story unfolding.

When He seems to be slow to act. Wait for Him.

The miracle is on its way.

 

“While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born”

Luke 2:6