All in Good Time

Do you ever wonder about the timing of things?

I wonder a lot about what might have happened if the timing had been just a little bit different. What if I hadn't met my wife when I did. What if I had taken the call to boulder Colorado instead of Portland, OR. What if Laura and I had found our current counselor 2 years earlier. Would things have been different? Sure, they would have. Would they have been for the better? That is impossible to say. What I know is what has happened with the timing I took or the timing that I was given.

I wonder what would have happened if Jacob hadn't tricked Esau and Isaac out to the firstborn's blessing. What would have happened in Isaac had died when he thought he was going to. Gen 35 is the story of two deaths. One is tragic, Rachel dies in child birth as she gives live to Benjamin. The second death is Isaac's which is also sad of course and yet it is peaceful in my mind. 20some years earlier Isaac thought he was about to die and Jacob tricked him into blessing him instead of Esau. Esau then consoles himself with the thought of killing Jacob when his father dies. But somehow Isaac lives for another 20some years as a blind old man apparently. He dies after the resolution has already come between Jacob and Esau. The two brothers actually bury their father together. Chap 36 while informing us of the descendants of Esau also tells us that he moves to a different place because the land of their father is not large enough to support both of them.

Do you see what just happened? God keeps Isaac alive long enough for the brothers to stop their feuding. In fact the feud is so long gone that Esau moves away from the land which would have been his as the first born and actually gives the land of the birthright to Jacob without a fight. Its just amazing the way God works out the timing in this family.

I don't think time heals all. I think God heals all. I also think God's timing is working out for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. We know Jacob wrestled with God, we don't know Esau's story. But it seems God had done some work on Esau's heart as well even if it was only through Jacob's change. What an amazing story.

I love to find 20 years later God has worked out the timing just as it was needed. It gives me faith in the way he has lead my life, when I met my wife, when we moved to Oregon, when we met our counselor. And it also gives me hope he will continue to lead and guide me in the timing of the future.

This is especially helpful to me on days when I just feel like quitting and moving on to something new. I know that he has the timing worked out and I just need to depend on him. I thought a week at a university in Colorado was crazy but he used it to call me to ministry. I didn't understand why I was interviewing for a different position 15 months after starting as a pastor of a five church district, but he knew the position in Portland was open just then. I have faith he will continue to move me as needed. In his timing and he will sustain me until then as he knows is best.