When I learned I was pregnant with our son, it did not feel like the most opportune time to have a child.
We were at the first weekend of our training to live cross-culturally. That fall, we were going to move overseas and lead a team of missionaries. I had language learning and cultural adjustment and leadership to do. A baby did not fit into the plan.
But the thought occurred to me one day, “What if this kid needs to come into the world at this time instead of when I had planned? And because of that, someday, he’s going to be in just the right place at just the right time to do something God wants him to do?”
Fast forward 19 years, and I look at my son, who in high school ran for president of his student government with the kid who ended up being just 3 months older than him, the one he grew up with. I think of the people our son knows, whom he has impacted, and I know this: God’s timing is perfect.
This concern about timing doesn’t just crop up in my circumstances. It permeates deeper, to the core of my walk with Him.
Recently, I spoke with a group of women I gather with regularly for some good old deep-end-of-the-ocean soul-baring. When we share, it’s inevitable one of us sighs with the realization, “I thought I’d learned this already.”
You know what I’m talking about. It’s that realization, “hey, this lesson seems familiar.” I thought I was past this. But no, here we are again. Or maybe worse: how am I just now figuring this out?
It’s tempting to get down on ourselves, to wonder why it’s taken us so long to learn something, or to realize what we thought we’d learned didn’t sink in deep enough. But I am learning this: we’re right on time.
“You’re right on time.”
It’s a phrase a friend of mine uses to encourage me when I wonder why I’m just now getting this or learning some lesson all over again.
This phrase invites grace. It invites us to trust in God’s patience, His wisdom, His ways, rather than our own. If God had wanted me here sooner, He would have brought me here sooner.
He says it to remind me that God knows the path of growth he has for me, and his timing is impeccable.
This is when God chose to bring me to this lesson. Or back to this lesson. Again. He doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t wonder why we didn’t get it sooner. There is a time for everything.
God’s timing is not ours.
Because who knows that you haven’t come to this moment for such a time as this? Who knows that you didn’t learn this lesson now for a specific reason?
Who says there’s a timeline we have to follow? If we really believe God numbers our days and knows the plans he has for us, we have to trust that we are where we are because it’s the timing he has for us.
Whether it’s our circumstances or our growth, God knows what He’s doing with us. From our minutes to our years, He is at work.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
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