Timing is everything, or at least so I have heard. Sometimes I wonder if it\u2019s true, and sometimes I wonder what part God plays in the timing of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember during my college days, my roommate and I somehow found ourselves registering for the same class at the same time. Given our different class position, schedules, and career goals, it almost never happened. But this time, the stars aligned, and we found ourselves taking the same early morning class for one semester. The class was called \u201cMan\u2019s Aesthetic Experience.\u201d It was a class designed to give us an appreciation for classical music, Greek sculptures, Danish paintings and such, but in truth, such a class scheduled for 7:30AM in the morning was perfectly designed to put students to sleep. In fact, it did it very well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That being the case, and Joey and I being the enterprising and adaptable students we were, we devised a plan. Most mornings, we would both go to class (attendance was part of the grade) but would take turns paying attention and taking notes. So, one of us would stay awake, listen, and take notes while the other would put his head on the desk and sleep. Or in Joey\u2019s case, snore. Later on, at a reasonable hour before a test, we would share notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a perfect plan, but it wasn\u2019t long before Joey modified the plan and started pushing the limit a little bit. Since at least a few absences were tolerated, why sleep with your head on the desk when you could remain comfy and warm in your own bed? Thus, on multiple occasions when it was my turn to take notes and his turn to sleep, Joey would utter a groggy \u201cGo on without me.\u201d Which I did. Sometimes he would miss something important, like a quiz or a presentation, but for Joey, the extra sleep was worth the risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For me, it was a different story. I\u2019m not saying I didn\u2019t trust Joey\u2019s note taking, but for some reason, I couldn\u2019t do much sleeping in class, and I almost never skipped a class. Joey would encourage me to stay in bed some mornings, promising to go and take good notes for us both, but I never did . . . except once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember the morning when we were maybe two-thirds through the semester and Joey got up to go to class. It was his turn to take notes. I woke feeling an undeniable urge to skip class, so I told Joey to go without me. \u201cI\u2019m going to skip class and sleep in this morning,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joey looked at me like some alien had taken over my body.\u00a0 It was so uncharacteristic of me.\u00a0 But I assured him I was still in my right mind and told him he should go on without me, which he did.\u00a0 It was the one and only time I decided to sleep in and skip that class, which makes it even more amazing that ten minutes later, Joey came shuffling back to the room, threw down his books, and said, \u201cClass was cancelled.\u201d\u00a0 I had unknowingly picked the perfect time to sleep in.\u00a0 Maybe timing is everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now as far as God is concerned, I wonder, did He cause class to be cancelled? Did He prompt me to relax and sleep in? Or was it just a crazy, very unlikely coincidence? I can\u2019t pretend to know anything about God\u2019s class skipping strategies, but I do believe he is involved in the timing of our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bible says there is a time for everything. It says we should \u201cwait on the Lord.\u201d It also says, \u201cnow is the time.\u201d I think we Christians often spout the \u201cwait on the Lord\u201d timing, but we are not so crazy about the \u201cnow is the time\u201d moments. God\u2019s timing isn\u2019t always about waiting. Sometimes it\u2019s about moving forward in life even though we would rather stay where we are. Maybe we are comfortable. Or maybe we are afraid of something in the future. Or maybe we see something coming that we want to avoid. But that stuff is all a part of God\u2019s timing too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Think about Jesus. He was the Messiah. He said so. He proved it. But the Pharisees said, No, you are not. We are still waiting<\/strong> for the Messiah. Even so, there was a right time for him to go to Jerusalem to die. Peter tried to postpone it. He was working against God\u2019s timing. Jesus recognized that \u201ctiming rebellion\u201d as the devil\u2019s work and went on to Jerusalem despite the suffering in store for him there. Now was the time, for the hard part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In every life, there are good things that happen, and bad things that happen. Or maybe I should say, there are fun things, and not so fun things. There are happy things, and sad things. But God\u2019s timing applies for both. If there is a best time for that good thing to happen, then there is also a best time for that \u201cbad\u201d thing to happen. And a \u201cbad\u201d thing happening at the right time, can be a good thing. That flat tire in my driveway may have kept me from a bad wreck on the interstate later. The layoff now may be God\u2019s push toward finding a better job. The timing is part of the way in which God works all things for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what about the really bad things? Is there ever a good time to get cancer? For my house to burn down? For my child to die? For me to die? I can\u2019t answer that. What I can say, is that sooner or later, I must die. And I don\u2019t want it to be later if God wants it to be sooner. Even if I could somehow postpone God\u2019s timing on that, I would be terrified to do so. What horrible things could I cause or do, maybe even unintentionally, in the days, months, or years I was on Earth when I should have been in Heaven. If God had allowed Hitler to die from some disease at the age of six, those who loved the child would have thought it a horrible thing. That he had an \u201cuntimely\u201d death. Would it be so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not saying that everyone who dies young would have grown up to be a Hitler or Charles Manson, or that every house that burns down would have harbored a future gang of evil. What I am saying, is that in every play, there is a perfect time to exit the stage. In every game, there is a right time for the coach to pull his star player out. There is that moment when the very best that could happen has happened. When \u201cgoodness\u201d is at it\u2019s peak. To wait longer, to refuse to move on, is to allow things to stagnate and rot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The timing is part of the way in which God works all things for good, right? I may not like it. I may protest and scream \u201cWhy now? Not yet! I wasn\u2019t ready.\u201d Or like Jesus, I may even fall on my knees in the garden and pray to skip it altogether. But in the end, if the Kingdom of Heaven is my ultimate concern, I must accept it. I must believe that a perfect God has perfect timing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what if we screw up and miss God\u2019s timing? In that case I suppose we may miss some opportunities and bring some unnecessary hardships. However, we can\u2019t let that cause us to give up in despair. For God, timing isn\u2019t everything. It\u2019s just one thing out of everything in an everlasting, infinite universe over which He reigns supreme with absolute control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Timing is everything, or at least so I have heard. Sometimes I wonder if it\u2019s true, and sometimes I wonder what part God plays in the timing of our lives. I remember during my college days, my roommate and I somehow found ourselves registering for the same class at the same time. Given our different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,278],"tags":[360,363,428,93],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consider","category-stories","tag-evil","tag-good","tag-skip-class","tag-timing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2895,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions\/2895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markspruill.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}