Daily Devotional for March 1

 

March 1                                                             John 8:12-20

                     In God's Time

The other day a friend was complaining about how slowly his
therapy was going. It had taken over two years, he plaintively
asserted, and it seemed interminable. I gently suggested that
it had taken him over thirty-five years to arrive at the emotional
state he was in and, though I doubted it would take another
thirty-five to sort out his tangled emotions, perhaps he was
right on schedule with his healing.

In today's verses, a remarkable passage follows Jesus' contro-
versy with the religious authorities: "These words he spoke
in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested
him, because his hour had not yet come."

In the Bible there are two concepts of time: chronos and
kairos. Chronos is the time which is measured by the clock.
Kairos, in contrast, is the "fittingness" of time, or as Scripture
states it, "the fullness of time." Kairos is God's time. When
we honestly try to align our will with God's will for our lives,
time takes on this new dimension of kairos; things happen
when they are supposed to.

Perhaps no one laid a hand on Jesus because he had more to
do: more healing, more loving of souls, more spreading of the
realm of God. Ultimately he was arrested. Ultimately he had
to die. But not before "his hour" had come.

I told my friend that I felt sure that his therapy would yield
good results in "God's time."

           Loving God, help me when I grow impatient with
        the gentle workings of your Holy Spirit to remember
    that things happen in your time and at your speed. Help
     me not to uproot what you have planted in me through
            an impatient need to see if it's growing, but to
                 trust that you will finish your work in me
                        "in the fullness of time."  Amen.

​

 

From The Road to Emmaus - An inclusive devotional Edited by Joseph W. Houle

Emmaus House of Prayer - Washington D.C.198