Timing wise, I have an interesting background. My Mum’s version of ‘on time’ involves at least a healthy fifteen-minute wait on arrival. She is not as early as my Grandma however, whose coat is on her back almost the night before she is due to go anywhere. My Dad’s internal clock is the opposite. He is nearly always running late. His plaintive cry of ‘I just need to….’ breathlessly coming from somewhere in the house, as he finishes his toast, finds his glasses or remembers he wants to post a card, that he has not yet written, (or in fact, bought,) is familiar to our family.

Mothers on the school run bemoan to me how quickly their day goes by before they have to pick up their children and how little they achieve. I don’t feel the same. Possibly as a result of the extremes within my family, I have an acute sense of time. I am, on the whole, a pretty effective manager of that precious gift. I know what I can achieve in 5 minutes and what I can’t. I have also had to learn how to juggle various activities at once. Being a mother to twins helped me grasp this skill with both hands”¦ or more accurately neither. I am able to prepare casseroles in minutes, whilst holding a baby and also be able to hold down quite a serious conversation on the phone. I’m not a superhero”¦a lot of Mums with small children are the same.

The gift of timing and time-management is so important in our hectic lives. We can have all the right ideas, but if they are presented at the wrong time, they will fall on deaf ears or hard ground. We can sometimes be given Godly dreams and visions for our future and mistake them for something that should be happening NOW. So many Bible characters were promised amazing things, but folded neatly and carefully by divine hands into that intricate covenant was a wait, a delay, a journey or a test. Someone like Joseph, for example, must have doubted a few times as he was in the pit, tethered behind a camel train, sold into slavery, lied about and sent to prison that God’s promises were true or His timing perfect. But we see, at the end of Genesis (50:20) his claim to his brothers: ‘You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done”¦’

There is time for everything your heavenly Father wants you to achieve today. “Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.”¨”
Charles Richards