Love Never Ends

My wife and I have a problem with binge-watching.

We tend to have a backlog of shows we really enjoy, and then watch them one at a time, nightly, until we run out of episodes of a particular show. Recently, this happened with the Great British Baking Show. It’s a cooking show streaming on Netflix from the Brits, and it was delightful while it lasted. Then, it ended. We ran out of episodes.

Endings come for nearly everything, from the insignificant TV show series to the much more serious seasons of our lives. This was one of the things King Solomon noticed as he observed everything under the sun: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.

There is “a time to…” is the language of Ecclesiastes 3.

In all of this “time to,” Solomon reminds us, God “has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

God is in control of everything, and we’re not always going to like His timing.

Martin Luther wrote, “It is not up to us to prescribe the time, the manner, or the effect of the things that are to be done. Everything comes and goes at the time that God has appointed.”

God understands timing.

If you’ve ever done something at the wrong time, you know timing matters. If you’ve ever done something at the right time, you know timing matters. But there’s a difference between the time on the clock or the calendar and the right time.

God gets to choose our time.

If you work out like crazy and you’re super fit. God chooses.

If you’re a smoker and drinker. God chooses.

You could go to war and come back safe and you could stay home and be killed. God chooses. This isn’t reassuring at first. It feels like God is a thief. Tuesday, I wrote of the darkness that surrounded me after my father passed. I would yell and scream at God. “You didn’t need him. I needed him. It wasn’t his time to go. It was his time to help me. Life isn’t better and I’m not stronger because he’s gone. I’m weaker and I’m worn out and I’m running on empty. God, can’t You see You messed up the timing.”

God placed eternity into our hearts and so every place where sin and death enter feels unnatural. Our instinct is to fight death all the way to the end.

Our instinct is to fight as if we could possibly do anything about it. We can’t.

The author of our famous love chapter, Paul, also writes in Romans 5:6, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.”

God chose a time for Jesus to come as well. This is where we can see in our world, where things end constantly, God’s love never ends.

But love! Love never ends.

Thank God, He gets to choose.

Heidi’s reflection:

Matt originally had another verse in his post that I took out. I am a mean editor. I like things lean, but this verse kept reverberating throughout my day, so I’m going to put it in here: Galatians 4:4-5, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Matt reminds us, God chooses time, but He also chooses you and me. He doesn’t leave us behind. He doesn’t bypass us and make us feel irrelevant, scared, and frustrated. Instead, He remains in control. He remains the constant. Love remains the constant, and we get to join Him on the journey. It’s never easy, but it’s always good.