Something beautiful in His timing …

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It is so very true that God’s ways are not our ways …

“‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine,'” Isaiah 55:8.

The way we interact is you say something, I then say something, and then there’s action. It isn’t always that way —- or at least that immediate — with God, as is shown so clearly to us with the first Christmas.

Wrapped into the Christmas narrative is the foretelling of the birth of John the Baptist in Luke 1:5-25, where we are introduced to John’s parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth. This couple is now likely in their 80’s and have long since ceased praying that God would allow them to have children. Long ago they came to face what they thought would be the reality of Elizabeth remaining barren. But an angel appeared to Zechariah with this news …

“But the angel said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John,” Luke 1:13.

God heard the prayers of Zechariah and Elizabeth the first time they prayed them. He cared immediately. But His perfect plan in answer to their prayers would not be immediate, it would come many years later.

Just like that first Christmas.

Israel longed for a Savior, and God had promised one.

Then He was silent for 400 years.

Not a single word delivered by a prophet proclaiming, “Thus says the Lord …”

Utter silence.

Then comes Christmas!

God had heard the prayers of His people the first time they prayed them. He cared immediately. But His perfect plan in answer to their prayers would come hundreds of years later.

Christmas reminds us that God does beautiful things for us, but all in His perfect timing …

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end,” Ecclesiastes 3:11.

There’s a song we sometimes still sing in church services that highlight the message of this passage of scripture …

    In His time, In His time.
    He makes all things beautiful in His time.
    Lord please show me every day
    As you’re teaching me Your way
    That you do just what you say
    In Your time.

    In Your time, in Your time.
    You make all things beautiful in Your time.
    Lord my life to You I bring
    May each song I have to sing
    Be to You a lovely thing
    In Your time.

In His perfect timing, God graced the world with the beauty of a Child …

“But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law,” Galatians 4:4.

“For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called:
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” Isaiah 9:6.

God’s hearing is perfect, and His heart for us is full of the love that He IS. He desires to accomplish beautiful things in and through our lives, and He will … in His time.

Christmas reminds us to wait patiently on the Lord, and we’ll see something beautiful!

Scotty