Bring Everyone Along: God’s Unexpected Timing Creates Beautiful Interruptions
by Lisa Allgood, Executive Presbyter
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
Let me just start by saying Ecclesiastes is not a book of the Bible I use a lot. But as I’ve been writing on God’s unexpected ways, one of my favorite Scriptures kept coming back to me – an extension of the one from Isaiah 54: Isaiah 55:9 “Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
That’s part of the larger piece of Isaiah that has some special personal significance for me. And so I searched around a bit, looking for other references to God’s mysterious ways. I found Ecclesiastes, and of course there’s the one everyone knows – Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 13:12 “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” Multiples times Jesus warns the disciples that no one knows when the Lord will appear; John repeats this in Revelation. (Interesting that God would call Himself a “thief” coming in the night, unexpected.)
If God’s way of thinking is literally light years ahead of ours, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised when He interrupts our plans, our expectations, our journey – with the unexpected, when we least expect it – and replaces them with His. In fact, don’t you think we serve Him best when we live lives of faith that count on it? Because then we’re open to changes in direction in our lives – our beliefs – our ministry. Yes- even for our churches, and where God is dreaming for us to go with Him.
Because in amidst all the unexpectedness of God comes His promises we know we can count on to be fulfilled. We may not see that fulfillment, but we know they will – for we serve a faithful loving God.
God winks. I’m looking for them more and more (and were we look, we will find; where we fin, we will see; where we knock, the door will be opened).
