What Timing

Yesterday was the first day of Vacation Bible School. It was also the funeral of Tim Muth.  Tim was a generous and beautiful man who served as a youth minister and a children’s minister here at Nativity. He died suddenly last week at the age of 50.  The juxtaposition of raw grief at the death of someone so young and the joy and exuberance of hundreds of kids as they set out on a new adventure was a little surreal. What timing.

Timing, they say, is everything. And yet, how often, is the timing in our life beyond our control. We do not control when we are born or when we die; getting a job or losing one can be according to someone else’s timetable not ours.  The relationships that come and go in our lives are not by a timing we shape; heartaches, sorrows and pain, as well as joys and triumphs are not usually planned.

Timing is nothing…at least our timing. God’s timing is everything.  The Bible says:

God does everything just right and on time,

but people can never completely understand what he is doing.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

So, if it’s out of our control and beyond our understanding, what are we to do? Live each day with gratitude and enthusiasm, as if a new adventure is unfolding…because it is. Live each day with clarity that you don’t understand what God is doing (completely) but he is doing something.  Live your life each day as if this is the one you get. Now is the time.