Last month, I saw my friends on Facebook start posting posts asking if it was too early for Christmas music, Christmas decorations, or Christmas treats on the first day of November. We had barely gotten past Halloween, and many people in my neighborhood still had Halloween decorations up in their yards to put fear in people’s hearts.
Yet, many people were in a rush to move on to Christmas, leapfrogging over Thanksgiving altogether. I know we are all different, but I’ve never been one to understand emphasizing Christmas traditions and decorations over celebrating the real meaning of Christmas, God I am just grateful for the birth of our Savior.
We cannot control or change the set time that God sent His Son into the world to save us any more than we can change our own birthdays. I know this because each year I celebrate my own birthday just two days before Christmas.
While I understand the excitement of the holiday season when Christmas time is here, I also understand the spiritual lesson of waiting on God’s timing (John 3:16, Romans 5:6, Galatians 4:4-5). There is wisdom in being patient and waiting on God (Psalm 27:14).
Not that I am the most mature or patient person, unfortunately, I had to learn this lesson the hard way repeatedly. After my accident and God’s miracle, I was in such a hurry to get out of the hospital and back to my life that I didn’t listen to my therapists and doctors about how serious my injuries were.
While I heard the words, I did not listen and pressed on to get my way, although I wasn’t ready to leave the hospital. I ended up falling off the commode after lying to the nurse about my ability to walk. In the rehabilitation hospital, I had cereal and milk fall out of my mouth while eating breakfast on my first morning there.
I was only 23 years old, and I knew better than the doctors, therapists, and God. Nearly 30 years later, I still struggle with my flesh and wanting to rush through life (Romans 8:-8, Galatians 5:17). If anything, the Christmas season should remind us of the need to slow down, wait on God, and not rush through life.
The sinful nature that we all have, not just the lost people or those who are politically different from us, distorts our perspective along with our hearts (Ecclesiastes 7:20, Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8-10).
Just like the first Adam, our flesh causes us to make careless decisions to get things we want in life. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, emphasizes the need to wait on God and His goodness if we want to be blessed (Psalm 62:5, Isaiah 40:31, Proverbs 3:5-6, Lamentations 3:25).
I have always found it interesting that God’s people had knowledge and knew the wisdom about waiting on God, yet still rushed to make many foolish choices and got in DEEP trouble. Even the patriarch of the faith, Abraham, was in such a rush to have children that he didn’t trust God’s timing and took matters into his own hands. All of these years later, the world is still paying the price of Abram’s impatience.
There is a lesson here for the 21st-century church: just because we have the promise doesn’t mean we understand the way or time God will fulfill it.
Israel, had God’s promise of becoming a great nation and many descendants, yet they constantly turned from God and followed the ways of this corrupt kingdom to become great. We live in a nation that has turned from God to pursue earthly greatness and temporary happiness. I’m not talking about the lost or people in the world either.
Many have turned to an earthly king who has promised earthly greatness and temporary happiness, just like his father did in the garden and in the wilderness (Genesis 3:5, Matthew 4:1-11).
The second Adam resisted the temptation of earthly greatness and chose the cross so that God might lift Him up at the right time (Luke 22:42, Acts 2:33, Philippians 2:8–11, Hebrews 2:9).
Even some of Jesus’ own Disciples fought about who would be great in God’s kingdom, and Jesus rebuked them because that isn’t God’s way or time (Luke 9:54–55). Many Christ followers forget that God’s timing isn’t the same as human time.
By now, most of us should understand God’s timing and ways are not like ours or this corrupt world (Psalm 90:4, Isaiah 55:8–9, Ecclesiastes 3:11). Things will not happen unless it is God’s perfect time for them to.
The world chases temporary happiness and greatness that will not last long at all. God offers us eternal greatness and happiness (John 17:3; 10:28, Titus 1:2, 1 John 2:25). I am amazed by how I and others get so easily distracted by the temporary things of this tiny little planet.
God has planted eternity in our hearts for a reason (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This temporary kingdom is not our final home, and we never will be truly satisfied here. The older we get, the more obvious it is how temporary this world and its treasures are.
The time is approaching when this sorry kingdom and its pleasures will be no more. Christmas time should remind us that God has greater things in store for His people than whatever this fallen kingdom can offer us.
Just like in cooking and baking, we must be patient until everything is ready if we want to experience God’s best, which is a masterpiece. Forcing things to get what we want never works out well in life. If we really want to be in God’s will, then don’t rush it!
