Our Timing Versus God's Timing

Things always happen at the “worst” possible time.

Ten days before Christmas, I got sick with the worst cold I’ve had in years (I’m just a few days over the aftermath).

Seven days before Christmas, a new cat happened to pop into my life. A very young, very ravenous, very energetic, very curious, very messy male cat.

I still had shopping to do, deadlines to meet, and projects to finish.

One night, exhausted, having spent the day scrambling to get what I could done with my limited energy and time, the cat made a new mess for me to clean up, despite my best efforts to minimize the amount of messes he could make.

I almost had a meltdown. I was so tired, so done, and struggling with the loss I’d sustained near Christmas years earlier.

All I could ask was why was all of this happening all at once? At the worst possible time?

The story of Joseph and Mary looks like a case of bad timing one right after another.

Mary gets pregnant right before getting married (Matthew 1:18).

Close to her due date, the Roman emperor decides to hold a census, and make people go back to their families’ hometowns (Luke 2:1-5).

Finally arriving in Bethlehem, about to give birth, there’s no place to stay, and Mary is forced to have a baby in a stable (Luke 2:6-7).

Soon after giving birth, undoubtedly exhausted, some strange men smelling like sheep and goats descend on her and her small family (Luke 2:8-20).

After finally settling in at Bethlehem, Joseph is forced to flee to Egypt with his family because a crazed king has decided to murder his young adopted Son (Matthew 2:13-14).

I mean, was their story the inspiration for A Series of Unfortunate Events?

But that's from our perspective.

Even as Mary and Joseph faced each inconvenient, unfortunate, embarrassing, and even dangerous predicament, God’s hand was guiding. God orchestrated all of these things in His perfect timing, to fulfill prophecy, to bring about His perfect work at just the right time.

Here are some of the prophecies fulfilled by some of those happenings with the “worst timing ever”:

The Messiah would be born of a virgin (Matthew 1:22-23).

The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:1-6).

God would call Him out of Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15).

All of these “unfortunate events” happened according to God’s planning in order to testify that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the long awaited Salvation of not only the Jews but the entire world.*

Am I saying that God’s fulfilling prophecy in our own bad timing scenarios? No, but I am saying He has reasons behind them which can’t be explained by human perspective. I don’t even understand why my own situation had to play out like it did, but I have realized a couple of ways the timing was better than I thought at first.

Because I was so sick, I was home from work for at least a few days, so I could oversee this new cat’s acclimating to his new living environment. I also had more time to clean up his messes.

Being sick around Christmas time also meant I didn’t miss as much work as I would’ve otherwise.

Some of the deadlines were pushed, so it was okay that I couldn’t work on them.

I still got all of my shopping done in time for Christmas, and some of the gifts I bought turned out to be better than those I planned on getting but wasn’t able to pick up.

Those projects are done or nearing completion.

Of course, if I’d had my choice, I would’ve been healthy and whizzed through everything. I wouldn’t have gotten sick, and the cat would’ve made his appearance at a different time (or at least not been as messy).

But God’s timing is different than ours, and He has His reasons for it. Even when we don’t understand it, when it doesn’t seem to make any sense why things happened when and how they did, He has it all planned out. We just have to trust Him.

After all, He knows what He’s doing.

*This salvation, of course, is freely available to all, but we must repent of our sins and declare Jesus as LORD and Savior, truly believing He alone saves us (Romans 10:9-13, Acts 2:37-39).