Time is in His Hands

Time is a strange thing. We've been taking a look at it from a few angles this week, and I figure that if the Lord wills, we will finish this week out looking at time.

So, why do I say time is strange? Well, it comes and it goes so quick. Yet, at times, it seems to take forever. But then, when you're doing something it seems to fly by. When you long for something it seems slow. And when you look back at it, you realize just how much time has gone by. Ultimately, we have no control over time. We can harness a lot of things in this universe, but time is something that we can't manipulate. It simply is what it is and behaves the way that it does.

Yet as I wrote the other day, God is above it and beyond it; God transcends time.

I know that I waste so much time, yet He is able to make the most of even my wasted time. No, it's not license to waste time, just that He is going to accomplish His purposes. I think a very clear example of this is in Romans 5:6:

"For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."

Notice a couple things here: Firstly that we are helpless before Christ.

We don't come to the throne of God for salvation as capable beings, choosing by our will and goodness to let Jesus be a part of our lives. No, we are as the Bible says slaves to sin, in desperate need of a Savior (Romans 6:20-23).

But notice the next part of our verse: Jesus died at the RIGHT time.

There was no other time at which the birth, perfect life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ should happen.

Paul states it like this in Galatians 4:4: "But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,"

When we look at the death of Christ we recognize, and rightly so, that it was an incredible act of wickedness on the part of mankind; The perfect Son of God would be brutally murdered by His very own creation. How could something like that ever be at the "right time"?

Yet we also see in many places that this was the exact and right time for it, and it was according to God's perfect timing. It was the only time, and it was always the time it would happen.

The primary gist then of this post is that salvation is God's plan, and its timing is perfect.

But this carries over into the character of God in our own lives. That is, we can know that God will act at the right time, and we need to learn to trust in that and wait upon the Lord. Yep, that's a struggle.

It's so strange that after having trusted in Christ for salvation, we can still struggle to trust Him with lesser things.

Many in Scripture had to wait on God: Abraham, Moses, David, the nation of Israel (and the world, frankly) waiting for its Messiah, and even us today as we await His return.

And while the challenge is there, the reality still stands, that we can trust God to act at the right time.