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Timing is Everything

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven."  Eccles. 3:1

My sister is a middle school band teacher and one of our family's favorite things to do each March is to go watch her bands perform in their yearly contest where they are assessed based on three songs they play.  I love watching the nervous excitement on the faces of all of the young musicians as they step on stage to perform their three pieces. 

As they take a seat and prepare to play their first song, which is usually a peppy march, one thing you can generally count on once that first beat is played is some toe tapping by many of the musicians.  Their training has taught them that keeping time by lightly tapping their toe will keep them on beat as they play.  Even the young musician in me comes out as I sit in the audience watching, toe lightly tapping to the beat of the music.

Those young musicians know that keeping in time is essential to making beautiful music.  Getting slightly ahead or behind the beat in music can be detrimental, especially when playing with a group of musicians. 

Timing is everything. 

Chances are that if you've ever been to a funeral or listened to the radio at all during the 1960s (or watched the movie 'Forest Gump'!), you've heard the passage from Ecclesiastes that speaks about the divinely appointed time for birth and death, weeping and laughing, war and peace, etc.  They are comforting verses that minister to us in the good times and the not so good times of this life.

If anyone ever knew about the importance of divine timing, it was Jesus.  I mean, He was God in the flesh.  He knew what every moment of His life was going to entail before it ever came to be.  He knew the storms He would calm, the children He would embrace, the demons He would cast out, and ultimately, the timing of His own death.

On several occasions in John's gospel Jesus is recorded saying, "My time has not yet come," during the years and days prior to His death.  This expression shows us that the pinnacle, most important time of His life was going to be what we would deem the darkest day ever: 

His Crucifixion.

As the day of His crucifixion drew nearer and He began to predict His death to His disciples and followers, this phrase changed to "My time has come." Oh, how Jesus must have felt knowing in even more fullness than you and I can imagine the meaning of:

"A time to be born and a time to die."  Eccles. 3:2a  

Where every one of our days are numbered, Christ in His divine nature knew exactly what number He was on.  He knew the inevitable betrayal He would experience and the unfathomable pain He would endure.  He knew from the beginning what it was going to take to provide salvation for a sinful world.

Friends, I hope you are not letting the accelerated pace and timing of your life distract you from fully experiencing Jesus and His sacrifice today, and especially throughout this Easter season.   If your schedule is in overdrive, then I beg you to slow down and take in the enormity of what Christ did on Calvary for an unworthy lot of sinners like you and me.

Stop for a moment right now and thank God for the sacrificial gift of His Son, Jesus.  Take some time to reflect on the perfect timing of God's plan to offer redemption to the lost world.  His perfect timing required the life of my Savior, so that I in turn could receive eternal life. 

Thank you, Lord!

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