God's timing is not our timing: An Easter Saturday reflection

08 Apr 2023 - by

by Liz Jakimow

“There’s no such thing as a theological emergency.”

These words were uttered to me as I left the building on Thursday, as a reminder that there would be nothing so drastic it required my immediate attention.

They also have some truth to them.

I often look at the long list of items on my task list, stressing that everything should have been done yesterday – and then getting anxious and irritable when those tasks aren’t completed. Every interruption is an annoyance, as it keeps me from doing those tasks.

But are those tasks really as urgent and important as I believe? Or could it be perhaps that I am overestimating my own importance? I am looking at my tasks through my eyes.

It is worth remembering that God would see my to-do list in a completely different way. Important, maybe. Although probably not nearly as important as I imagine. Urgent, probably not. They are just one tiny thread in God’s kingdom coming to earth. And God’s kingdom works on its own timing.

“With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8)

I wonder what the days between Good Friday and Easter felt like to Jesus’ disciplines. What did the days after his resurrection feel like?

We too are caught between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We wait in joyful anticipation.

But waiting can be hard. We want everything done yesterday. And I’m not just talking about those pesky tasks on our to-do lists.

We want justice now. We want liberation now. We want freedom now. We want an end to poverty now. We want forgiveness and reconciliation now.

They feel like theological emergencies.

But there is no such thing as a theological emergency. God’s kingdom (or kin-dom) is coming to earth, but it is happening in God’s own timing.

This does not mean that we should not do everything we can now to help that kin-dom come. We should fight for justice. We should lift up the downtrodden. We should help the poor and needy. We should examine the structural and political systems that allow inequality and injustice to exist.

But we must remember that we live in the period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. While we want everything to happen now, sometimes we have to wait. Yet we wait eagerly, knowing that God’s kin-dom is coming. Easter shows us that it has, in fact, already happened.

So in a way, the most important items on my to-do list were indeed completed yesterday.

From Ecumenical Way of the Cross, photo by Liz Jakimow