Don't Have Time

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One of the most frustrating things on this earth is time. You can’t rush it any more than you can skip over it or slow it down. It also seems that time is a tool.

We’re told in Scripture that we can use time to:

• ·         Make the most of every opportunity (Colossians 4:5)
• ·         Wait on the Lord (Isaiah 40:31)
• ·         Grow in understanding (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
• ·         Fulfill the good works prepared in advance (Ephesians 2:10)

These things don’t happen without time. Healing doesn’t come when time doesn’t pass. The best of friendships don’t develop in a moment. Life’s greatest and worst experiences –birth, marriage, death, the fulfilling of dreams- all these things take time.

We’re a generation (or two, or three) that loves shortcuts. We don’t wait in lines, we book online. We don’t sit praying and caring patiently about each other for months while we wait for the next letter to arrive. Instead, we text and get it done.

Achievement-driven, our lives are packed with plans and goals. Rather than doing something well, we qualify ourselves by citing how much we do overall. To be “busy” is a backwards badge of honor.

Full of ambition and zeal, it can often be said of us that “they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Romans 10:2-3.)

I’m guilty of this. I’m guilty of writing –even this post- in haste. I want to produce good works for the Lord. My desire in blogging, in writing at all, is that I share the words He gives me. Yet so often I don’t wait for His Word to teach me first.

I suspect I’m not the only one whose passion gets in the way of the stuff that time spent by the Lord is made up of, stuff like patience, listening, understanding, humility, and reliance wholly on Him.

Have you ever set a deadline for God? Not “God do this by this time,” but “God, if you haven’t come through by this time, I’ll know it can’t work out so I’ll take that as a sign to go with the other option.” That’s what we say to the Lord who created time!

It’s simple evidence of how, to us, a day can feel like a thousand years of weight while to God, “a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. –Psalm 90:4. So fleeting, so simple.

Time is no constraint upon the Lord or His plans. It is yet another thing created, as in Genesis when He separated the night from the day to “let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years” (Genesis 1:14.)

Put in the time. Take the time. Use it wisely. Because you and I are free to do so. You and I are free to believe that: “there is a time and a way for everything, although man's trouble lies heavy on him” (Ecclesiastes 8:6.) It’s heavy right now. Time marks out plenty that we’re not comfortable with, like beginnings, ends, changes, and that life is out of our control.

But we know who made time. We trust in the one who uses time for our good. He “has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11.)

The verse continues. All that God does endures. The time He made and set for our lifetimes on earth –that’s a gift, too. Our time is part of something complete, something far beyond our understanding. Lean on Him and know that that is cause for relief.

That horrible, wonderful, frustrating blessing called time is His too. So let it be and know that like all gifts, His time is good.

This post is being shared on: #TestimonyTuesday, #RaRaLinkup, Intentionally Pursuing,Titus2sday, Esther Girl, Thought-Provoking Thursday, and Faith-Filled Friday.