God’s Peculiar Timing

By Audrey Stallsmith

As Moses gaped at that burning bush, we can imagine what he must have been thinking. “Where were you, Jehovah, forty years ago when I was a handsome young prince raring to defend my real people, and all of this actually might have been possible?

“These days I am what the Egyptians most despise—a smelly sheep farmer from the derriere of the desert. My face furrowed from squinting into the sun, I’ve reached that age when the joints already are out of joint and the future promises decline rather than ascent. 

“I could have used your help when push came to shove back there in Egypt. In the end, I didn’t have the confidence to stand up to the Pharaoh alone, even when he was my adoptive grandfather. So I turned tail and ran.  My confidence shattered, I was happy to be taken in by a priestly father of females who was desperate for a substitute son. 

“That’s all I’ve ever been, a substitute. Not a real Egyptian, not a real Israelite, not even a real Midianite. I never even was wily enough to accumulate any flocks of my own as Jacob did from his father-in-law. Not only am I a fugitive, who has spent years attempting to herd some of the dumbest creatures known to man, I’m also a failure. What earthly reason does anybody have to listen to me?

“You are too late, God. Back then, I would have had the energy and enthusiasm to do what You asked. These days, I know too well what is possible and what isn’t, and just want to be left alone.”

Of course, Moses didn’t have the courage to say all of that aloud to God. But he did insist “I’m not the person for a job like that! Send someone else.”  (Exodus 3:11, 4:13)

Sarah too must have thought “It’s too late,” when she sat on the other side of a tent wall and heard a mysterious stranger tell her husband that she would  have a child. No doubt, there was bitterness in that laugh of hers. 

‘Back when my body was young and beautiful enough to attract kings, I could have made easy work of birthing a baby. Where were you back then, God? Now that my monthly cycles have long since ceased, it’s just not possible for me to even begin an infant—let alone carry one for nine months.”

In a culture that glorifies youth, those of us who are autumn rather than spring chickens—or those who just feel old due to past failures—may assume that it is too late for God to use us. We only need consult the scriptures to learn otherwise. Among those who just felt old probably was Old Testament Joseph who spent years as a slave and then as a prisoner before seeing his dreams finally realized.

Among those who were old, apparently, was Naomi, who had left Israel during famine with high hopes of doing better elsewhere—only to experience a famine of a different kind when her husband and sons all died, one after the other. She returned to Israel with nothing but one Moabite daughter-in-law—who would become the great-grandmother of King David.    

Not only does God choose the strangest times, he also picks the strangest people to carry out his plans—including those who seemed doomed to failure. Gideon, for example, wasn’t the bold and dashing warrior type. On the contrary, he was—as he admitted himself—the least respected member of his family. And so timid that he kept having to receive reassurances from God that everything was going to be all right.

But that, actually, is what God wants—those who depend on Him rather than those who insist on making it on their own. I’m sure persons who are antagonistic to God will insist that he is trying to make puppets out of us, but that isn’t His intent. He has enough things He can control, after all, without needing to control us too!

But He knows how flawed we are and how incapable of succeeding without His help. We may make a bold lift-off, but somewhere along our flight path, we also will make a bold fireball unless we have God as our co-pilot. 

Granted, as Job complained, some evil men do appear to make a success of their lives. But how will that help them when they are on their deathbeds? They can take neither their money nor their fame with them—and those things wouldn’t impress God anyway.

It isn’t necessarily the large accomplishments, such as Gideon defeating thousands with 300 men, that God wants from us. Small acts, like small armies, can make a big difference.

I learned that recently when my father found an abandoned barn kitten and asked me to return it to its mother. All my poking around in the spot where the kitten had been found failed to locate its dam, however, so I gave the kitten to a semi-wild cat on our back porch who already had two others.

During the time I was searching for the mother, I carried the kitten with me, stroking and speaking reassuringly to it. Apparently due to the brief periods of its being held by both Dad and myself while it was quite young, that kitten turned out tame while its siblings remain semi-wild like their mother. Small encounters can make a big difference in the lives of the people with whom we come in contact too.       

And God’s odd choices often have deeper insight than ours behind them. No doubt, Sarah’s late pregnancy taught both her and Abraham the importance of not running ahead of God. 

And who could better cope with the children of Israel than Moses, who had spent the previous forty years learning that creatures who were almost as stupid as rebellious humans must be led rather than driven? Even he did lose his temper with the Israelites occasionally, but a less patient man than a shepherd would have given up on them altogether long before they reached the Jordan River.

Moses must have matured from the hot-headed young buck who killed an Egyptian in a fit of rage. So, when we seem to be vegetating in the backside of our own personal wasteland, we need to remember that the desert always seems to come before the promised land.