I haven’t posted in a month… but that’s not a reflection of what’s been happening. Quite the opposite in fact.
But much of what God is doing isn’t really things I can share here. It’s not my place to share other people’s private stories, nor is it always wise to share what God showed me in those stories.
Yet everywhere I look, things are happening.
Galatians 4:4 says that God sent Jesus in the fullness of time. My understanding of this verse is that Paul was saying that God’s timing in sending Jesus was perfect. That sending Him any earlier would have been too early, and sending Him later would have been too late. History bears some of this out, for the stability and road system of the Roman empire enabled the apostles to spread the gospel like no other time in history before or for quite a while afterward could have allowed. But I’m sure God had myriad upon myriad of other reasons why that timing was perfect.
I believe God answers prayer and moves in people’s lives in the fullness of time as well. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, yet so that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” To me, this verse speaks not only of the restoration power of God, but also of the perfectness of His timing…timing that He alone knows. Timing that is rooted in eternity, but timing that is often beyond our understanding.
Why have these last four months been God’s timing in so many things? I don’t know…yet I am reminded of a few scenes in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
There is this scene when Mr. Beaver first told the children, “They say Aslan is on the move!”
And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different.
Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning—either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.
I’ve felt for awhile now like Peter, Susan, and Lucy do there.
And now, this is what I see happening around me. Remember that the White Witch’s reign had caused nothing but winter for hundreds of years. And now…
That is how I feel.
God is releasing His power.
Life is flowing.
And that wonder is what I feel as I notice beginnings blooming, and exiles ending, and things that are dead being brought back to life.
For God is on the move!
And He does all things well. (Mark 7:37) My conviction of the truth of that verse in my life and the world today is only becoming more and more firm, and my trust grows with it, for this is what my trust is grounded in.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen!
–Eph. 3:20-21