He has made everything beautiful in its time. –Ecclesiastes 3:11
I recently visited a friend’s house, and as I walked to the front door, I noticed that she just planted some flowers in her yard. When she came to the door, she was very excited to tell me about the flowers she planted and when they would bloom. Her last statement as we walked inside really struck a chord with me. She said, “I know they don’t look that great now, but in time, when they bloom, they will be beautiful.”
How many of us see things and people that do not look that great now and immediately write them off? How often have we judged people just because their current status did not impress us? How many times have we taken matters into our own hands because the Lord was not working quickly enough for us?
The teacher, King Solomon, assures us in the verse above that the Lord has made everything beautiful in its time, so when we prematurely jump ahead of God’s timing, we never get to experience the full measure of beauty that the Lord prepared. During my visit with the friend from the first paragraph, she told me about one of her other friends, let us call her Lisa, that recently got engaged. Lisa had been dating her boyfriend for two years when they began to talk about marriage. Her boyfriend told her that he would propose to her soon and hinted that he might have already purchased the ring. For weeks, Lisa waited anxiously, but there was no proposal, so she got frustrated and called her boyfriend up one night saying, ‘I do not want to wait anymore, please come over and propose to me now.’ He thought she was joking, but when she told him that she would break up with him if he did not, he drove over to her place and proposed to her, and she said yes. How exciting! Right? I did not think so either. Even though they are married now, my friend tells me that there is a hint of embarrassment in his eyes every time he is asked to tell the story of how he proposed. Lisa once asked him how he planned on proposing, and he responded saying, “It would have blown you away, but I guess you’ll never know.”
How many of us have had to settle for okay because we were not willing to wait for God’s perfect? How many of us have ended up in terrible marriages because we were in a rush to experience it before God’s timing? How many have started shaky ministries because we were too anxious to wait for God’s timing? How many times have we jumped into mediocre situations, relationships, commitments, etc because we could not seem to wait for the beauty in His timing?
The Lord has made everything beautiful in His time, and the only way that we would ever get to enjoy the fullness of the beauty of His timing is to patiently wait on Him in faith. All of us would probably like to know what lies ahead in the future for us, but God has not told us everything, and this befuddles us. Why has He not told us everything? He wants us to live by faith! You see, God has a beautiful purpose even in our season of waiting, but many never get to enjoy it because we spend it kicking and screaming about how unfair our lives are. I challenge you today dear friends to hold on to the words of the teacher in Ecclesiastes 3:11; God has made everything beautiful in its time. Why don’t you wait to experience that beauty of His timing today?
Grace and peace be with you.
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THE BEAUTY OF HIS TIMING