God's Calendar

"He has made everything beautiful in its time" (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Many, many years ago, I directed a children's choir, and one of the musicals we put on had this great little song in the middle:

In his time, in his timeHe makes all things beautiful in his timeLord please show me every dayAs you're teaching me your wayThat you do just what you sayIn your time

It was sung as a solo by one of the little girls in the choir and it was a high point—I still remember it all these years later. At the time, though, I didn't realize that second line actually comes from The Teacher of Ecclesiastes. "He makes all things beautiful in his time."

In the midst of these "times," the Teacher recognizes another time: God's time. Things don't always (or often) happen on our time schedule. What must happen and what is most important happens in God's time. On God's calendar.

It's easy to argue with The Teacher. This world doesn't seem so beautiful. Just in the last week, we've had people die because of their faith at the hands of an obviously mentally disturbed young man in Oregon. We've watched floods ravage towns and shorelines. We've watched a terrorist group destroy yet even more of the world's history. The world does not seem to be a beautiful place. Oh, to be sure, there are moments of beauty and hope that slip through. But the world does a pretty good job of helping us forget those as we see more ugliness emerge.

But it's being on the world's calendar when we see only the dirt and the ugly of the world. We want things to happen right now, beauty to come right at this instant, change to happen when we want it. That's the way we've been trained. God's calendar is different. He makes everything beautiful in its time, in his time, taking the long view of the span of creation. "It" (whatever "it" is) may not be beautiful now, but it will be. There may not be anything you can see but ashes right now, but beauty will rise from those ashes. God has promised. And he has a different calendar then we do. God makes all things beautiful—count on it.