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Apr 07, 2024 06:00am

Time

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Life is fleeting and often feels somewhat puzzling. One day or week might fly by as fast as lightning and feel as if no time has passed, while some hours, minutes, or even seconds seem to linger on forever.

When you are waiting for answers to come, waiting for a reply after a heartfelt apology or plea for forgiveness, when you wait to see if one line or two show up on a test, when your child is stumping the specialists and you are waiting on lab results, when you sit in a doctor’s office waiting for the top of their field to enter with news for you regarding results, plans, diagnosis…these moments might feel as if they somehow gained ability to take up more space in time.

When you are rocking your child to sleep, watching him or her do their trick AGAIN (are you watching, Mom?!), when your husband or wife holds your hand, and you feel deeply known and loved anyway, when your child accomplishes a milestone, when your family belly laughs at the table…these moments can seem way too short.

Sometimes, those moments that felt long seem like blips in the radar when we look back. Teenage crisis made us feel like the world was crashing around us because, to us, it was. The whole family coming down with the flu at the same time felt like impossible days to survive.

Sometimes, life surprises us like a punch in the gut – a miscarriage, broken trust, financial crises, terminal illnesses, the death of someone you love who you thought would be there forever…and time just stands still – but only for you. The rest of the world has the audacity to keep moving along. The earth continues to rotate, and people still laugh, live, and go on as if everything is as it should be…but it’s not to you. Those seem to be the longest seconds and minutes and days and weeks.

We turn around, and life has continued its forward motion, regardless of any attempts we make to stop the progression…or speed past the hard parts.

We are not in control.

We can find comfort in this, though.

God’s Word tells me that every one of my days was written before the world began. His Word also assures me that God has a purpose in all those chapters, the long seconds and the lightning-speed years. Every moment He allows is for His glory and the good of His people. This seems to be one of the hardest concepts to embrace, one that seems to be a lifetime lesson.

But, even if we can’t see how God is working this out in our own lives because of the limits of our human perspective, we can look at examples in lives around us and those documented in His Word that allow us to see more clearly with a broader lens of seeing from “after” their days played out…

When we look at the life of Joseph, we can see many moments that must have felt infinitely longer than the actual time endured. Imagine being told you are the chosen ruler out of all of your brothers…only to return to your shepherding duties, despised by your brothers, and even questioned by your father for many years.

Imagine you dutifully and lovingly obey your father’s request to check on your brothers, and they throw you in a cistern to die. Those minutes in that deep well probably felt more like an excruciating eternity.

Then, just when you think they might have had a change of heart, and you are pulled from your hole, imagine being sold to strangers as a slave. I’m pretty sure it would be hard to hold on to that promise of being “the chosen son to rule” at that time.

But Joseph continued to live a life of faithfulness, regardless of his circumstances.

God blessed Joseph for that obedience, and I would like to hope that there were moments in that chapter of his story that did feel like they flew by, as he experienced blessings and joy, as God continued His purposeful work on Joseph’s character.

Imagine the shock when he was unfairly accused of wrongdoing and thrown into jail. When his life changed in an instant. Rather than wallowing in bitterness and anger, Joseph chose to live out his faith exactly where God placed him, whether it was a place of comfort and peace or hardship and pain.

In the end, God did allow Joseph to rule over many, including his family. God used him to preserve his family during a time of famine.

In his words, “What others meant for evil, God used for good.”

May we all learn to embrace the mission God places us in – wherever our story takes us – remembering that God is in control, and nothing He allows is wasted-the minutes that feel like years, the years that feel like seconds…let’s see our mission field afresh each day God allows us.