“There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV
On the Clock
We grow up learning that God’s timing works in God’s timing, not ours. Nothing is more powerful than saying a prayer that seems to have no return address. Patiently, or impatiently, we seek to have our prayers answered “in due time”. When I’m on vacation, it’s probably my interpretation that life slows down quite a bit. Maybe this is God’s way of connecting with me with a subtle reminder that when things get crazy busy, there isn’t enough space to handle 5G (or God x 5).
On a recent trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park, my wife and I had a chance to talk with the locals at Sprague Lake. We were on a mission to photograph a moose. One guy said, “About 4 pm, right where you’re standing or something pretty close – you should find at least one moose and maybe more coming from the trees”. We had about 25 minutes to wait - and sure enough – Bullwinkle comes traipsing within about 20 feet with the focus of getting wet and washing off his brownish coat. What started off as a wading in the water turned into a splash only a 3-year-old could appreciate. The whole bath lasted about 10 minutes at which time the moose wandering off into the trees on the other side of the lake.
I’ve had these “on vacation moments” where had it been 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after – we would have missed the whole thing! How many of these live situations have I caught, and how many of these wonderful nature moments have I missed. I’d like to think I’m a pretty patient person. But I’ve walked away from a fair amount of being in nature, scratching my head and wondering why the literature I read before our trip came up short.
God works in mysterious ways in an attempt to “show us the goods”, but I have to think He scratches his head after being as clear as He can be. After all, everything I hope to see on vacation are things he created. When we allow ourselves to tap into our faith, God is like a grizzly bear in the wild. But what happens when the grizzly bear rambles towards us with a rapid rate of speed. The moments that God really wants us to know something and we just aren’t paying attention.
If we believe that God is omnipresent, how many of His messages fall to the ground and wither away? While I want to believe that God doesn’t expect us to catch everything, He sends our way, I understand that a tree full of knowledge gets recycled for the next person. So many times we get annoyed that God hasn’t answered our prayers – it is taking way too long – and yet we ignore what He has to say in the ordinary times of life. Like the wrist watch whose battery has quit working, we sometimes fail to understand when God’s watch is working just fine.