In His Time--After the Waiting and the January Mondays

Yesterday was another January Monday--but that is okay--

except that January is flying by awfully fast!

It's a quiet Tuesday now, with the whole family gone, some to work and some skiing with friends.

Jonathan and I just got back from a quick weekend trip to South Dakota to survey some mission projects, help on Saturday, and other things.

I got to spend Saturday helping in the office--typing and editing articles for the next Indian Vision paper (particularly articles focusing on the life of Frances Montour who, with her husband Raymond, founded SIM and passed away last year), and helping Alanna Lavery get their family newsletter ready to mail. At just age 16, Alanna is a huge help to her parents' ministry--operating the folding machine, the envelope addressing machine, and checking the addressed envelopes against a list.

I stuffed about 342 folded newsletters into envelopes and helped to seal them. 

(And secretly thought how very much I love to help in an office--anything having to do with writing, paper, letters, articles, books--and words!

Words!

This morning in my devotions, some words spoke to me. 

They weren't just my words or the words of a family member or friend or preacher or missionary.

They weren't a missionary newsletter or a sermon.

They were God's words. 

I was reading Psalm 75, and it said, "When I choose the proper time, I will judge uprightly."

"When I choose the proper time..." 

The proper time. 

The right time.

So much hinges on the right time.

At the right time, this Psalm tells us, God "is the Judge; He puts down one, and exalts another."

"For exaltation comes neither from the east nor from the west nor from the south."

The judgment, the putting down, and the exaltations all come from God--

in what He deems to be the proper and right time. 

It's likely to not be our time, since His ways are so different than ours. 

But it's in His time.

He will judge.

He will work out the things that need to be worked out. 

As I scrubbed the crockpot and milk pans and the rest of the huge stack of dishes this morning, I found myself starting to sing a tender chorus that came to me, inspired by the verses I'd just read.

  

I ended up sitting at the piano and playing it through as I sang it over again--not too well, you understand, since I can't play really well in the key of D.

There are exactly two sharps in that key, and that is way too many for my unmusical brain.

But there I sat, trying to get the sharps right while I tried to pay attention to the words.  

"In His time, in His time.

He makes all things beautiful in His time.

Lord, please show me every day 

As You're teaching me Your way,

That You do just what You say

In Your time.

In Your time, in Your time, 

You make all things beautiful in Your time.

Lord, my life to You I bring;

May each song I have to sing

Be to You a lovely thing

In Your time!"

 

Our times of waiting, of boredom,

of failures,

of struggles,

of wilderness or dryness--

these times are not in vain.

They are not necessarily fruitless.

In these tough times God is teaching His children lessons--

lessons of faith, patience, trust, 

of letting go and relinquishing control,

of being brought down so that He and not we receive the glory. 

In His time--after all the wilderness wandering,

after all the January Mondays,

and after all the hours, days, months, and years of waiting,

God will judge,

bring down,

and lift up.

In His time!