We all want fast solutions and make fast decisions, because there is no time to waste. The hardest thing for me as a Christian is not the 'doing' stuff - I can handle the call to sacrifice, service, ministry, etc. But when the call comes to "Be still, and know that I am God", (Psalm 46:10), I find it rubs me up the wrong way. I fuss and fret when God takes His own sweet time; I am very inclined to 'run ahead' of God, especially in stressful situations. Like when I was absolutely stretched working 11 hours straight as we started daycare in the kindy this year. I had prayed even from last year itself that we would be able to find the right person to work the extended hours. In the meantime, obviously I had to anchor it. I murmured, complained, and told God He should be letting me relax as I grow older instead of pushing me to such limits, battling daily traffic jams up to 1 1/2 hrs on the road and hey, without any extra pay.
Despite all the pleading and praying, I had only 1 applicant for the job up to early Feb. So since there were no others, and since (honestly) I was getting physically very tired, I confirmed the offer to the sole applicant. The following week, a stranger rang the bell at the gate. She was apparently just passing through on her way to work when she decided to enquire about a job vacancy she had somehow heard from one of the flat residents nearby. Turned out she was a better qualified candidate than the one I had offered the job to. I was in a bind of my own working. My waiting was not with trusting. All because I was in a hurry to get myself out of the inconvenience of having to work so hard. God showed me up for the lazy bum that I was.
But my God is an awesome and loving God. He overturns the dumb mistakes I make. The very moment the lady walked out after our interview and as I was kicking myself mentally for being in such a hurry to get the position filled, an SMS came. The first person declined the offer already made. I didn't have to withdraw, apologize, provide excuses, or lift a finger to get out of the mess I had created. I was free to make the offer to the (right) person God had brought at just the right moment. Like we always say, God is never too early, never too late, but always right on time. Problem is His time isn't our time.
But I am learning, have been learning for the past 12 years and will continue learning for the rest of my life on earth that God isn't in a hurry and so I shouldn't be too. This is one university in which all students will take a life-time to graduate from. I had my first lesson in the waiting room of death, watching a beloved husband waste away from the cancer that ate him up over 2 years. That was the time I came to the end of myself and admitted I couldn't handle my life, no matter that I had it all, I really had nothing at all, except what God had given me in the first place. I call it a defining moment, when we discover our life is really not our own. How foolish we are to delude ourselves that we are in charge. Heck, if it were not for God's grace, I would not even be able to draw a single breath through my nose right now. I may never wake to see another sun rise tomorrow. So why did I allow myself to miss it today, hurrying through the motions.
Indeed, why do we often rush around like a chicken without a head to wade through a list of to-do's everyday? Sure we need to work; work is good - God gave Adam the world's first job after all - and necessary. But methinks mankind has lost the art of living in our working. We let our job, our ambitions, our plans define us, instead of our Creator. Indeed we have no time or need for a Creator to look over our shoulder in the first place. Because we are so capable, powerful, intelligent, and self-sufficient in and of ourselves. So we hurry along on this road we call our life; basically we decide what we wanna do to get what we wanna get.
Well, at least I did. My very first prayer was to petition God for the desire of my heart - my husband's mortal life on earth. God took 2 years to give me something better - He carried my husband home to live forever more in heaven; the same hope and promise I am blessed with. I then learnt to pray for other stuff - family, friends, nations - 12 years down the line, I am still praying the same stuff. In one of my more diligent moods, I once kept a log of all my prayers, with columns for the date I began praying about something and the date when it was answered, either fulfilled or denied. I gave up after numbering some 200 items. Because the ones still pending outnumbered by far the ones with both dates entered. And it was such a hassle flipping back the pages to update the items. I learnt then to throw away my time-table and let God draw up His own.
But every now and then, I regress back into self-mode. I get impatient with the Creator of the universe; sometimes I even wonder if there's really anyone 'up there' listening to my daily stream of prayers. Yet like Jacob who spent all nite wrestling with God, in spite and despite of myself, I hang on. So like the old patriarch, I declare "I will not let You go, unless You bless me" (Genesis 36:26) - actually, the declaration is as much for myself as to God. Like a stubborn mule who will not move out of position, I cling onto my belief that there is a God who will intervene...at the right time.
Jesus talked a lot about the 'right time'. He refused to be drawn into the limelight when the mother who gave birth to Him requested some help to change water into wine at a wedding to save the host's face. He declined His family's opportunistic urging to attend a feast where He could be a 'public figure, to show Himself to the world'. He let His best friend Lazarus die and rot for 4 days in a tomb before He resurrected the stinking corpse. Instead of taking the quickest route to work, He purposely detoured out of the way, just so a 'pariah' woman could bump into Him. Standing accused before a territorial king and Roman governor, after being interrogated throughout the nite, He kept quiet, 'like a sheep led to slaughter'.
And at exactly the time ordained, on a Friday afternoon, He died on the cross, bringing to fulfillment the grand divine design of mankind's redemption. Scripture tells us that at the precise moment of His death, the veil of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem was torn into two, from top to bottom (Mark 15:38), signifying the opening up of a direct way for man to approach God. 3 days after, not a moment sooner or later, when all human hope was gone, early on a Sunday morning, a grieving Mary Magdalene was greeted by a resurrected Christ. And we who believe know sooner or later, our beloved Lord will come again to gather His saints on that final day of the end of the world as we know it.
Considering all these, I really should take more time to 'tune' into His time, instead of ordering my life according to a clock or calendar on the wall. To Him, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The world carries on spinning, flowers bloom, people fall in love, marry, have babies, live and die no matter how I hurry along, so really, I should just reset my days according to heaven's time-zone - E for Eternity.
To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven - Ecclesiastes 3:1
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