March 18, 2009 "Perfect timing"

Timing is everything. I’ve heard that phrase my whole life. Sometimes people were talking about selling a house, or starting a business. Sometimes they were talking about avoiding an accident, or bemoaning an accident. Occasionally they were discussing a happening in a sporting event.

In today’s lesson from Romans, St. Paul writes: “At the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

I don’t understand God’s timing. Why not have Jesus come and die for Adam and Eve the day after they’ve ruined their relationship with God. Or why not have Jesus come and heal things before Adam and Eve’s two sons behavior gets to bad that one kills the other.

Years ago, my wife Anne and I were in Salta, Argentina. We met a couple we did not know, who had coincidentally come to Salta and overlapped with us one day. During that one day we discovered that we’d had some amazing coincidences and relationships in common. And we discovered that we had a critical piece of information that would relieve a great burden this couple had carried around for more than a decade.

Timing is everything.

I don’t understand why God allows so much that is not good to happen. Yet there have been enough moments where timing has been very good to me and for me. When that happens I’m sure God is still in charge.

“At the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” The beauty is that the effects of that death are not confined to time as we know it in its linear fashion.

Christ died for the ungodly, past, present, and future. Since I have enough in my life to qualify me for the ungodly category, I can only bow my head and say “Thank you Lord.”

And may I have enough faith to trust my times to God. And may I seek to use that time to show God’s love “all the time.”