“Timing is everything”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Saturday, January 1, 2022 Galatians 4:4-7 (Forward, p. 64) CEV p. 1218

One of my favourite and most compelling images comes in an article by Jay Kesler in his little book, I Never Promised You a Disneyland. He speaks of a tour he was given of the assembly line of a Ford car manufacturing plant. The tour guide explained that, at exactly the right time in the assembly process, the precise part ‘showed’ up and was riveted or welded to the already partially completed car. That is because an order had been placed in a computer sometime prior to that, and the distribution program and assembly process were so programmed as to make it appear exactly at the appropriate time and place to fit that order. The fact that the particular part had been manufactured some time ago and had come from a distant manufacturing plant made no difference. The computer made sure that it was there exactly when needed.

Jay Kesler applied that image to God’s work in orchestrating the birth of Jesus. In my present translation, the Contemporary English Version (CEV), it reads ‘when the time was right’, while the King James Version says, ‘in the fullness of time’, but the essence is the same. Kesler then goes on to spell that out:

-the Jewish diaspora after the Fall of Jerusalem meant that there were Jewish believers and synagogues all over the known world, which meant that a wide swath of the empire had heard at least something of the God of the Hebrew people and were familiar with what He was like and what He expected of people. To people only familiar with the somewhat raunchy and questionable behaviour of the Greek and Roman gods, and the behaviour they espoused, this was unduly attractive;

-the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem meant that there was once again an established and more or less stable community of faith, from which the Christian might grow;

-the infiltration of the Greek language and culture meant that there was a common language, koine or common Greek, all through the area of the Mediterranean, making it easier for the Good News, the Gospel, to be conveyed;

-the Roman empire, with its engineered roads and with its army suppressing piracy and banditry and establishing a relative peace (the Pax Romana), commerce, communication and travel became a truly viable option, even for the common folk;

The incredible thing was that these various pieces would not have been in place a hundred years earlier but had ‘come together’ at precisely at the right time, at the ‘fulness of time.’ Timing was everything in terms of the coming of God’s Messiah, Jesus Christ.

What this says to me is that God doesn’t leave anything to chance, that He has a wonderfully orchestrated purpose and plan, both for us and for the world, and that He allows it to plan out just as He wills. That means that we can rest secure in His love and mercy, and trust Him to do what is best, whether it is for us or for others. Surely, that is a good attitude to take as we enter into this brand-new year. Amen.

Forward notes: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (verse 4-5).

“God’s time is always full of knowing and anticipation. Because God knew the world would need a Saviour, God sent his son through Mary to transform our lives, especially when we feel orphaned by this world.

“As someone who lost her father at a young age, I always wondered if another father would adopt me. Would my last name change? Would I have to act differently? Myriad questions flooded my mind about exactly how this adoption would occur.

“Ultimately though, I was never adopted by another father. As an adult constantly in search of God’s grace, I came to find comfort in knowing that God redeemed my heartache through adoption as a child of God. What if, when we felt fatherless, we longed instead for adoption by God? What if we clung to this promise of redemption?”

Moving Forward: “What does it mean to you to be a child of God?