The Path to Christmas 23
I have tried in the past to write, and reflect, and meditate, and study the amazing statement that the Apostle Paul challenged us with in Galatians 4. “For when the time was right, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law that He might redeem those who were under the Law.”
It is astounding on several counts. First…”the time was right.” Why was 1 AD the “right time?” What was so amazing about that day on the calendar that made it just the “right time?”
You know our lives are fenced in with issues of timing. The date of our birth… we remember. The date of our death… others remember.
Timing owns us. You may be working somewhere today because you were in “the right place at the right time.” Or you may be dating or married today because, in perhaps a “fluke” of timing, you met your beloved. Businesses succeed or fail due to timing.
If you are a musician (I am not, I’m a drummer), timing is everything. Every drummer who has studied percussion theory knows that there is no such thing as a perfectly timed beat. It is the ‘holy grail’ that eludes the serious drummer. Timed down to quarters and half seconds, it is virtually impossible to “hit” it, and then to do so repeatedly.
Timing is essential in dance, in science, in so many parts of our life. You are living today “for such a time as this.” “There is a time for everything under heaven…” said the Preacher in Ecclesiastes.
And, in the wisdom of God, a time for Jesus to be born on earth. Not born in Heaven… He is “the ancient one” according to Micah 5. But the body the Father had prepared was finished with its period of gestation… and now it was “time” for birth.
We call that “time” Christmas. The moment Divine intersected humanity; that the glorious One from all eternity cried an infant’s cry in Bethlehem’s stable. Holiness and humility. Deity and humanity. God made flesh. Incredible.
Maybe for you the timing is right to stop… running? Being afraid? Questioning God?
And if the time is right, and “today is the day of salvation,” and your heart is open, the birth of Jesus will happen in you!
But when the right time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law. Galatians 4:4
Our Timeless Father, we come to You this day, as Christmas comes closer, to acknowledge that our days are in Your Sovereign hands. You know future from past, and nothing in our present is hidden from You. As we walk in obedience to You, we trust our days and hours to You since You know the beginning from the end. May we live each moment, conscious of the timing of our lives before You. May not a moment be wasted. In Christ’s name, Amen.
