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May 12, 2022“God’s time is not our time”
The very phrase “God’s time,” is an oxymoron because God by definition is outside of time. God is quite literally in eternity, eternal, beyond any concept of time; However, since God created time, now from our perspective, we speak of God as working in time as well.
Why is this important? When we experience our short life of 70, 80 or more years, or for some much less, a year can feel like a long time. In certain moments of our life even an hour or a day can feel like a very long time. Also, human beings tend to be very impatient. I know I need to pray for patience every day, most times because of a delay in traffic that lasts a mere 20 minutes.
If 20 minutes can feel like an eternity, and a year, for many of us, is experienced as a long time, then what must it be like to have a thousand years, a million years seem as an instant for God? Today in the Acts of the Apostles which is read at the Catholic Mass throughout the world, we “hear” St. Paul speaking of God’s pattern of salvation leading up to the coming of Jesus. St. Paul explicitly includes lengths of time in his speech to those in the synagogue in Antioch. He is witnessing to the truth that God’s plan does not unfold in our time, not quickly, and sometimes over generations.
St. Paul begins with the Chosen People escaping slavery in Egypt at Passover and then for “forty years he (God) put up with them in the desert.” Then “at the end of about four hundred and fifty years” he gave the land of the seven nations of Canaan to His chosen people. “For forty years” God gave them a king, Saul, who ruled over the kingdom of Israel. Then he gave them another king, David, son of Jesse. Even though St. Paul does not number the years from Jesse to Jesus, we know that is was about 1,000 years till God becomes man in the person of Jesus Christ. Why is this timeline important? Salvation is not a quick process from humanity’s point of view.
In the 12 step programs there is a saying that is essential to recovery: “One day at a time.” We cannot look too far ahead because God lives in the present moment and if we are being honest, it is the only time we live too, in the present day. When God acts, he acts now, but it may be a now that is 40 years ahead for us, but when we get to that point in time it will still be the present moment for us. God’s plan for each of us is perfect, even when it feels like it is unfolding too slowly. God grant us all patience to trust that everything happens for a reason and everything happens in Your perfect time, not ours.
