When has "wait for just a minute" ever turned out to be "just a minute"? We intend on this diversion to be only a minute but it turns out to be five or more. "I'll be ready in a minute." For many, this isn't a mistake but an outright lie. Fifteen minutes or more later we are out the door late again for church or whatever else we had scheduled with a specific start time. We've lived through these moments and gone on to do the same over and over. We come to the place where our MO (modeus operandi) has become not only expected but planned around!
Pretty much all of my life I've been focused on being there 10 to 15 minutes early. One specific time I arrived on time and rang the doorbell. The wife came to the door not dressed for the dinner in her home. She said, "No one is on time in California." She did let me in. True to form the other guests began to trickle in 10 to 15 minutes late. I haven't been able to give up my desire to at least be on time. Apparently others haven't bee able to give up their desire to always be late.
There is a repeated phrase in the Bible I've kept in my mind when I think about God and his understanding of the situations I find myself in. The Bible says: "God, at just the right time..." You can fill in the blanks. A curious story is the one of David and his men fleeing from King Saul. Backed into a canyon with no escape David prayed for Gods intervention. To his surprise quite suddenly King Saul and his army turned around an vanished towards home. David was later to find out that God had intervened. A messenger had come to King Saul and told him the Egyptians were attacking the kingdom from the south. You might think that this was all there was to the story. Not so.
The messenger had been on foot and the journey to warn King Saul in the northern part of the kingdom would have taken about 2 weeks. Two weeks before David prayed for intervention. Prior to that God would have needed to create whatever was necessary to motivate the Egyptians to attack the Israelites from their border.
I hope you see the magnitude of the elements necessary for God to bring about the salvation of David and his men. In order for all of this to happen God would have had to know that the event was going to happen. The Bible tells us that "God is answering our prayers even before they pass over our lips." God knows what we want and need. He is planning on a path of taking care of our prayer requests even before we pray them!
God never says, "In just a minute." Why? Because he is ahead of time taking care of things before they become prayer requests. WOW! God is never late nor does he tarry. The next time you tell someone "for just a minute" remember how God views our time and it's importance to be on time. A minute should never be longer than a minute!
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