Time has come today

In God's Time

2 Peter 3:8 Common English Bible (CEB)

Don’t let it escape your notice, dear friends, that with the Lord a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a single day.

“Time flies when you’re having fun.” 

“Time waits for no one.” 

“Lost time is never found again.” (Benjamin Franklin)

“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” (Shakespeare) 

We all know that time is hard to pin down.  Oh, we are certainly able to look at the clock on the wall and know what time that says it is.  We talk about our body clock - that thing that tells us when it is time to go to sleep or get out of bed or eat lunch.  We complain about Daylight Savings Time and Jet Lag and working night shifts and all of the things that make it hard for our bodies and the clock on the wall to come to an agreement about what time it actually is.  We talk about people aging well, having old souls, being ahead of their time.

Likewise, how long things actually take to happen seems more than a bit flexible.  We recognize that time seems to move faster as we get older.  Weeks and months seem to fly by.  Wasn’t I just 40 a month ago?  How then is it possible I turned 69 last week? Time speeds up when we are working toward a deadline, but moves so slowly when we are waiting for something, like children waiting for Christmas, and almost everybody waiting for the cable guy. 

Knowing that we are finite creatures with a limited life span, our understanding of time is that there is only so much of it.  If a thing is going to happen it needs to happen now, or at least according to some schedule we understand.  We are impatient.  Most of us find it hard to wait for anything.  Right now we are impatient about how long this whole shelter in place thing is going to last.  Time seems to be getting away from us.  There are hundreds of jokes about not knowing what day it is, because each day while sheltering in place looks like every other day. Even those of us who are able to work at home have trouble keeping our days straight.  We are getting a taste, perhaps, of what eternity might look like. 

God is eternal.  God is and was and always will be.  God has not only all the time in the world, but all the time before and beyond the life of this world.  Of this there is no question.  If we find a week or a year or a decade to have flown by, how much more so must it be for God.  Where we think 100 years is a long time, for God 100 years is both an instant and an age ago.  

Because I tend toward impatience, one of my frequent prayers is very short.  “In your time, O God, not mine.” Does this prayer sound familiar?  

When have you had to allow things to happen in God’s time?