Adapted
from sermons by Aun-Quek Chin—Singapore
Infinity
vs. Infinity
“For man also does not know his time” (Eccl
9:12a).
Few phrases exist in our vast literary canon that can scare the modern man
as much as the seven words above. Pulsating in all of us is the urge to tame
the unpredictable randomness stretched out before us. All of history has been a
documentation of our efforts to satisfy this primitive urge to know our time.
In this digital age, more than ever, we are terrified of losing our tight grip
over the minutest aspect of our lives, and even our deaths. Tellingly, the
advent of wearable virtual-reality technology brings this point home: we now
even wish to conquer, and create, the worlds we inhabit. Every advancement in
technology and science, from the life-support machine to the field of genetic
studies, is modern man’s indignant reply to Solomon: You are wrong, we do know our time, and in fact, we can even control
it.
But perhaps the great teacher did not mean to frighten, only to warn.
What Solomon understood, as taught to him by God, was that some things
will always be beyond man’s reach. Wielding the full force of statistical
science in our hands, the most man can ever hope for is not to reduce
randomness, but to prepare for it. The only certainty is death.
In stating that terse but bleak truth, Solomon warns us of the Christian
who struts down the streets of life expecting to always know what lies
ahead—what comes round the corner may surprise him, and send him flailing
headlong into a crisis of faith. So if false optimism is not the answer, surely
we cannot simply accept the terrifying status quo! Even the most veteran
church-going Christian can attest to the soul-wrenching experience of living in
this state of constant uncertainty. Every tomorrow harbors untold horrors: Will I still have my job? What will the
prognosis be? What will happen to my child?
While Solomon does not have any easy answers, Ecclesiastes 3:11 gives us
piercing insight into our struggle with this existential anxiety:
“He has made everything beautiful in its
time. Also He has put eternity in [man’s] heart, except that no one can find
out the work that God does from beginning to end.”
This verse holds the key for the Christian paralyzed by fear of the
unknowable future, and disheartened by life’s setbacks: wait for God’s time to
come.
What is God’s time? God’s time is not an alternate dimension. It is also
not a distant future when all sufferings will cease and everything is
predictably perfect. God reveals to us, through Solomon’s handsome prose, that
“God’s time” is the eternity He has given us—the profound human awareness of,
and unquenchable thirst for, beauty and goodness that has no end. This
consummate clarity comes with having a relationship with the infinite God.
Oddly, the verse marries this empowering fact with a sombre reminder of
our overwhelming ignorance in light of God’s omniscience. Why? Because, in
Christianity, faith buoyed by knowledge and experience is important. But, as
our current anxieties prove to us, we will never know or experience enough,
especially about our futures, to give us peace. Therefore, our only solace is
in a faith that is comfortable with all uncertainties because it is intimate
with one certainty: that trust in God and His word is all we need. Solomon,
again, helps us with a summary in Proverbs 19:21: “There are many plans in a
man’s heart, nevertheless the LORD’s counsel—that will stand.” If worldly chaos
seems endless, then God intends for us to fight endlessness with eternity, infinity with infinity.
Of course, such things are easy to say, but often hard to do. Which is
why we turn our eyes to Moses, to a time before the advanced scientific and
technological achievements we now enjoy, to see how Christians today can live
full lives by holding on to the promise of God’s time.
All
in Good Time
Although Moses possessed an impressive organizational mind, what truly
made him excel as the chosen messenger of God had less to do with his
clear-headed planning and more with his trust in God’s time over his instincts.
The first thing Moses did after his famous encounter with God at the
burning bush was to plead with Jethro, his Midianite father-in-law: “Please let
me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are
still alive” (Ex 4:18b).
A puzzling observation: why did Moses seek to gain permission from his
father-in-law when he had already received divine sanction from his
Father-in-heaven to leave for Egypt?
The custom of the ancients was for a man to seek permission from the
head of his tribe before he set off on a long journey away from home. Moses
knew that performing this Midianite tradition was a risk. What if Jethro denied
his request? Moses would no doubt still be resolved to complete his mission,
but at what cost? Would Jethro have sought to sabotage his quest? If his
meeting with Pharaoh did not go to plan, would Moses be endangering the lives
of his family? Would he lose the land and the people he had learned to call
home? Moses could not have hoped to predict the outcome. So why did he take
such a risk?
Moses understood the first truth about God’s time: to truly believe in
it, we have to abandon our compulsion to control everything in our lives, and
take refuge in the only certainty we need—that God has a plan. How does this
translate in practice?
We fear the unknown so much that we fight for every bit of control we
can possibly get, even if it means souring friendships or injuring the feelings
of loved ones along the way. This is what would have happened had Moses, in all
the splendor of his great calling and mission from God, marched straight off to
Egypt. To Moses, the numerous risks faded into irrelevance because he believed
that God had His time and His plan. God would not allow His work to be
compromised by Moses’ simple desire to be sensitive to the feelings of his
loved ones.
This is a unique kind of patience that flows from a deep trust in the
divine. Hosea, the prophet renowned for obeying God’s command to marry a
prostitute, knew firsthand what it meant to relinquish control to the Lord and
trust fully in His plan, no matter what. So when Hosea relays sage advice in
Hosea 12:6, telling us to “[o]bserve mercy and justice, and wait on your God
continually,” we ought to take it to heart. Hosea is telling us that waiting on
the Lord requires us to embody certain Christian virtues. It requires us to be
kind and fair, to be a positive moral influence on the people we encounter on
our walk of faith.
Take, for instance, the issue of church work. Church affairs tend to
arouse intense sentiment because, quite rightly, many of us take matters of
faith seriously. Breaking sacred tablets, carelessly striking rocks, delivering
robe-ripping public prayers—Moses regularly demonstrated how emotional and
affective the journey of faith can be. As human as Moses was then, so are we
today. So when we find our ideas and contributions obstructed by this or that
person or committee, the uncertainty piles on and, in our frustration, we may
lash out at our co-workers-in-Christ. We allow our fear of losing control to
dictate actions we later regret, hurting the harmonious order of God’s church
in the process.
Man is a strong-headed and quarrelsome animal, and changing is hard. But
to believe in God’s time is to demonstrate a trusting self-restraint; as long
as we are faithful to God’s will, we need not charge head-first against the
ordered customs of church and community. Paul puts it best in 1 Corinthians
14:33, reminding us that “God is not the author of confusion, but of peace,”
continuing in verse 40 to advise that “all things be done decently and in
order.” If Hosea and Moses understood that being respectful, forgiving and,
most of all, patient, would not impede God’s work but enrich it all the more,
then it would behoove us to do the same.
More
Than We Know
The popular historical film Schindler’s
List tells the moving story of a former pro-Nazi German businessman who
ends up saving over a thousand Jewish lives during the Holocaust. It is, as the
cliché goes, the story of an ordinary man doing extraordinary things in
extraordinary times.
Moses was one of the first “Schindlers” of the ancient world. Before his
brush with God at the burning bush, the only responsibilities Moses had were to
his family and livestock in uneventful Midian. Then all of a sudden, the fate
of an entire nation was thrust into the untested hands of this simple shepherd.
Moses was standing, rod in hand, at the brink of history. Moses was scared—of
that we can be sure. Though he trusted in God’s time at first, his nerves got
the better of him. Moses was probably paralyzed by fear—for all his fervor and
faith, he had yet to begin the long trek to Egypt. But God understood. And so
on His second visit to Moses, God reassured him, “Go, return to Egypt; for all
the men who sought your life are dead” (Ex 4:19). This gave Moses the courage
to return to Egypt.
This is a heartening depiction of the second truth about the nature of
God’s time. The concept of God’s time, while seemingly lofty and high-minded,
actually means that God is heavily involved with our private insecurities. And
because God knows all our concerns, He never gives us more than we can handle.
Time, as we know it—coldly measured in minutes and seconds, months and years—is
unforgiving and cruel in its relentless onward march. God’s time is different;
God cares about our feelings and worries, and yearns to help us along.
As it was with Moses, just as we are about to embark on something truly
important in our lives, unexpected burdens and anxieties may visit us. As we
survey the innumerable problems before us, we ask the universal questions of
suffering: Why me? Why now? What next?
God had great plans for Moses. He has great plans for us today (Eph
2:10). The problem with great plans is that they often carry too many unknowns.
Somehow, Christians are buoyed by this constant feeling that they are meant to
do some good in their lives. What holds many well-intentioned believers back
from rising to the occasion is the fear of uncertainty. Often, these are
uncertainties about individual ability: What
can I actually contribute on the missionary trip? Can I really lead a Bible
study? What if I get a question I can’t answer when I start preaching? We
drown out our extraordinary calling with our self-perceived ordinariness.
The truth is, we can never predict whether our gambles will pay off,
like Schindler’s, or if miserable failure awaits us. But that’s alright,
because believing in God’s time means knowing is beside the point. What matters
is that God knows, and that God reveals in His own special way. God knew the
one big thing that was bothering Moses, and gave him the chance to regain his confidence
to rise to the call. The tricky part is how God reveals His grace and will to
us. Humans are naturally stubborn, and when we choose not to see something, we
close both eyes. We refuse to accept that God cares about our talents, and pass
up the opportunity, as Queen Esther almost did, to serve God when He calls.
Therefore, to believe in God’s time is to believe in three things:
firstly, that God knows more about our own abilities than we do; secondly, that
we have to be sensitive to God’s calling through frequent prayer and
Bible-reading; and thirdly, when the call comes, we should have the courage to rise to meet our
destinies. A fear of the uncertain has no place in the heart of the Christian
who heeds these words: “Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will
be established. The LORD has made all for Himself” (Prov 16:3–4a).
Another interesting observation is that Moses surely had more worries on
his mind than the one which God assuaged. Why was one pithy consolation enough
to bolster Moses? Because that one divine remark reminded him that God knew his
anxieties, and that he had no cause to worry for God was with him every step of
the way. The Christian does not need to know all his troubles are gone.
Sometimes, all we need is a little nudge.
Everyone’s
Waiting
Sadly, even in matters of faith there is no panacea. Believing in God’s
time is not a solution to all our problems. It is hard work. Most times,
waiting is not enough, because we wait for earthly time to pass, thinking that
God’s plan has a schedule just like our plans. This is wrong; God, unlike the
clock, is living. There are two things about waiting on God’s time that we must
remember.
Firstly, we have to be able to accept that suffering and problems will
not disappear just because we believe in God’s eventual deliverance. Moses
could brandish his miracle-rod all he wanted, but his supernatural feats could
not intimidate the mighty Pharaoh. Even after their escape across the Red Sea,
miracle after astounding miracle could not satisfy the children of Israel. God
does not promise quick and easy solutions. He delivers us today, and tests us
tomorrow. Some trials in our lives make sense not because time passes and they
disappear, but because our belief in God’s bigger plan and time reveals to us
that we needed those trials to become better Christians. For instance, Apostle
Paul pleaded bitterly for his thorn to be removed, and he waited. It was not
the passing of time that helped him make sense of his pains. It was his belief
in God’s time and plan for him that helped him understand why he suffered so (2
Cor 12:7), inspiring the unforgettable Pauline hymn to godly trust: “My grace
is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9b).
Therefore, we wait with a hope not of a paradise on earth, but of the paradise
beyond, and a trust in the God who dwells there.
Secondly, and what comes as most surprising, is that as much as we think
we are waiting for God, most times God is waiting for us. A common habit of man
is to recollect all the events of his past and play god, thinking, If this had happened here instead of there,
if that had been postponed till then, then things would be better. The
crucial difference between our imagination and God is omniscience. We can mentally
rearrange our past to fit an ideal chronology, but we do so in the darkness of
our ignorance. We have to trust that God knows the rightful time for all
things—from the blooming of a flower, to the death of Jesus (Rom 5:6),
everything happens according to His appointed time. And that means if something
we know to be good, to be holy, pure and righteous eludes us, then perhaps the
problem is not the extent of our patience, but how we fill our time while we
wait. When we seem to be mired in our problems, unable to make any progress or
find any reprieve despite our earnest prayers, we ought to remember that
waiting upon the Lord is not to have a sit-around-do-nothing faith. It means
taking concrete steps toward becoming a better Christian. Often, God also
wishes to use such tests of endurance to remind us to lean on Him as we walk
with Him.
It is impossible to dispute that Moses’ faith had grown tremendously
after his ten-plague-long encounter with Pharaoh. Why did God have to send ten
plagues, not one, or five, or seven? These become redundant questions when we
remember that trusting in God and His time frees us from needing to know all
the answers. Likewise, when God withholds the Holy Spirit from the earnest
forty-year believer, for instance, we are understandably puzzled. Perhaps there
are things for that Christian to learn; perhaps he is not yet truly hungry for
the Spirit; perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. These speculations do not matter. What
matters is the eternity within us that remembers—however long we have to pray
on earth is negligible, for we will gain infinity in heaven.
Conclusion
“Wait on the LORD,” sings the sweet psalmist.
“Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the
LORD!” (Ps 27:14).
It may well be that we will never know our future. When all we need is a
reliable peek into what lies ahead, our statistics, algorithms, and machines
may fail us. What Moses has taught us, in his evolution from faint-hearted to
faith-hearted, is that patience and trust will never disappoint us. Uncertainty
will persist, but it must not prevail. God has His time, and it is ordered, not
chaotic; compassionate, not indifferent; active, not lazy. And as long as we
are aware of the great eternity within us as we walk our Christian journey, the
victory will be ours.
“But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings
like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.”
(Isa 40:31)
