Advent
Meditation
December
23rd
31.
In God's Time
Matt
2:19,20 After Herod died, an
angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt
and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the
land of Israel , for those who
were trying to take the child's life are dead."
Have
you ever had a time in life when everything seemed to go wrong and you
were left wondering whether you even had any future at all? Life is
full of upheavals that sometimes we would prefer to call catastrophes.
One minute everything was going fine, and then either gradually bit
by bit, or even perhaps suddenly, it all started changing and you were
left alone and in despair.
Well,
the Bible is full of such incidents. Moses, the Prince of Egypt, was
one such person. There he was; his future certain, as an adopted prince
of the king of Egypt .
But he's aware that he's different; he's aware he's an Israelite by
birth, and one day he tries to help his birth-people and ends up killing
an Egyptian. He has to flee the country and for the next forty years
he is looking after sheep in the wilderness hundreds of miles away.
Without doubt he must have given up any hope of any meaningful future.
He would simply die as an unknown shepherd miles from anywhere. And
then God turned up, and he became one of the most significant men in
history!
But
it doesn't have to be forty years to feel you have no future. After
the pain of personal failure, any period is too long. We don't know
for sure just how long Joseph and Mary and their baby were in Egypt,
but they must have been wondering about the future, wondering what had
happened. A year ago they were happily engaged in Nazareth,
and now here they are hundreds of miles away in a foreign land with
a tiny baby to look after. The visit of the angel to Mary was probably
now over a year back and in a year your memory begins to dull, and when
everything has not worked out as you expected, you can be left wondering
was it all a dream – but then there is the baby!
How
long will we be here? Will God speak to us again? Will it ever be safe
for us to return? Surely these must have been some of the questions
going through their minds. One long day followed another. Did Joseph
get a job or did they just live off the gifts the wise men had brought
them? This is not their land. These are not their people. What are we
doing here? And then God spoke. The trouble about this is that we can
go weeks or months just wondering and then, it's as if He came suddenly,
and He spoke. There is usually no warning. He just turns up and speaks.
A few hours before you might have been wondering if you'll ever hear
from Him again, and then without any fanfare He speaks – and it all
starts over again! Is this Him or is it wishful thinking. Joseph has
another dream and the angel appears again but now to tell him it is
all right to return home; it's safe now!
Do
you see this? So often we just read this story with so little thought.
Oh, Joseph had another dream; how nice! Yes, but that was after days
and weeks and months of uncertainty. If you think the Christian life
is one of daily conversations with God, you are half right. You can
talk and talk and talk (it's called praying) but sometimes it seems
like a brick wall and you hear nothing in return. Then – at just the
right moment – He speaks. You'd almost given up, but He hadn't! If you
haven't ever seen how important timing is with God, check it out – Rom
5:6, Gal 4:4, Gal 6:9, Mk 1:15, Matt 10:19, Mt 26:18, Jn 7:6,8. Jn 7:30.
Oh yes, it's all about right timing and God knows when it is, so rest
in that knowledge today. Your times are in His hands. Be patient
and rejoice in that!
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tony.thomas@rochfordcc.co.uk
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