Christian Living

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It took time for the maturing of the saints of old. Abram had lived seventy-five years in Haran before God told him to pack up and go to a land the Lord would show him, and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Abram obeyed without question and ended up in Canaan. Then when he was ninety-nine years old, the Lord changed his name to Abraham and said the next year an heir, Isaac, would be born. So when Abraham was one hundred years old and Sarah was ninety, the promise was kept. Isaac was born.

Moses spent forty years in the Egyptian palace as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. When he defended an Israelite and murdered the Egyptian assailant, he fled to Midian. Forty years later his attention was caught by a burning bush, and he received a new assignment: go tell Pharaoh to let God's people go. It took another forty years to lead them to the Promised Land. Then God allowed him to look over into Canaan, but not to enter. And God buried him. Nothing was rushed or done in a hurry on God's eternity table.

Time is not the important thing with God. Getting a person where He wants him to be is the important thing. So years and years that seem so long, perhaps wasted to us, are nothing to Him if He gets us where He wants us to be. We decry the loss of time, not realizing that it might not have been lost in God's great economy; that, indeed, it was necessary to get us from there to here. God's point of reference is eternity, not time. The last few hours that the thief lived on the cross were more significant than any that had gone before. Were they wasted or was that the path he had to walk to get his heart right with the Lord? Were the eighty years Moses lived before the burning bush wasted? We have to lift our perception of time and its use to how God sees it. Eternity has always been. Time began at creation and will end when God decrees. But eternity stands uninterrupted. Time is just a concurrent slot preceded and followed by eternity. That is why it is so important to do our human best to make the most of our short minute, and let God have His way with our time. God moves in the sphere of what's best for us, and only He knows what thatis.

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