Day Three Hundred Thirty-Six “Seldom and Never”

            I am a member of a small, nearly extinct minority group, a kind of urban lost tribe who insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, on the sanctity of being on time, which is to say that we ‘on-timers’ are compulsively, unfashionably prompt, that there are only handfuls of us in any given city, and unfortunately, we never seem to have appointments with each other. (E. Goodman) Those wise and humorous words, penned by a Pulitzer prize winner, adequately sum up my feelings on the matter of punctuality.  I am an on-time groupie, part of that ‘extinct minority group,’ a side effect of my overly zealous, organizationally prone brain.  But I am a vanishing breed, a fact that is driven home to me weekly as I occupy my regular pew on Sunday morning, early of course, waiting for my son and his family to slide in under the fashionably late bar.

We can be late for several reasons, sometimes by events completely out of our control; we get stuck in traffic, we accidentally oversleep, the children have a meltdown at departure time, or something unexpected deters our plans.  It is understandable that imperfect people are occasionally late, but what do you do when God seems to be late, when He doesn’t answer our prayer within our time frame, when Heaven seems silent and our requests are seemingly ignored, when God is simply taking too much time? In those dark times are we convinced that God is tardy?  It is then that I am tempted to cry out with the psalmist, “Make haste to help me!”

The Scripture presents us with bountiful examples of God being right on time: when He opens the Red Sea for Israel, when He brings down the walls of Jericho at the threshold of battle, when He rescues three Hebrew boys from a flaming furnace.  Those situations may have been less stressful for the participants if He would have chosen to intervene earlier, but God’s timing is always perfect.  Martha understood the conundrum of God’s timing when she watched her brother Lazarus die, experiencing that devastating grief: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”  You are too late, my Lord, why did You delay?  But hallelujah, the glory she was about to witness was beyond comprehension.  Jesus was right on time to work a miracle for Martha and her sister Mary, strengthen the faith of all those grieving at the tomb, give an amazing lesson on the resurrection, and draw “many of the Jews” to believe on Him.

We serve a God Who is seldom early, but is never late; He is in time, on time, every time, accomplishing His will according to His perfect timetable.  Trust in Him to “bring it to pass” as He sees fit.

Psalm 37:5  Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

Lord, I am an impatient child. Help me to understand that Your timing is perfect, and You are NEVER late.

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