Perfect Timing

We’ve finished the Names of God 2024 study, and I’m sad to see it end. The discipline of studying His names, investigating the way He reveals His character through His names, has changed me. I’ll be doing something similar in 2025 – looking at His attributes.

I won’t be following an organized list like I did in 2024, but I will be using a book to help me stay on track – Ann Voskamp’s Gifts and Gratitudes. It’s a gratitude journal that will force me to be specific and granular. By the end of the year, I’ll have recorded more than 1,000 things for which I’m grateful.

The title of this blog post is “Perfect Timing.” God has it, but I’m jumping the gun. It’s not 2025 yet, but I can’t wait to share what’s been on my mind.

Our pastor’s sermon last Sunday debunked some of the common misconceptions about Christmas. In particular, he talked about the timing of the wise men’s visit. They weren’t at the manger along with the shepherds. He told us to go home and take the camels and kings out of the nativity scene and put them across the room.

What?

And after they came into the house, they saw the Child with His mother Mary; and they fell down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And after being warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way. – Matthew 2:11-12

We don’t know how long after Jesus’s birth they came, but the text offers some clues. Jesus is referred to as a child, not a baby, and he lives in a house. I’m pretty confident it had been a while since he slept in a manger.

The second chapter of Matthew gives another clue. This one’s tragic.

Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent men and killed all the boys who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi. – Matthew 2:16

To be on the safe side, Herod ordered all the boys two years old and under killed. Jesus was probably a toddler when the magi visited.

What does it matter? Let’s look at the timing.

As nice and cozy as it is to imagine the wise men kneeling in front of the manger, which was probably stone, not wood, by the way, God’s timing is so much better.

1. Mary had endured a hard trip while pregnant, and she’d just given birth. Imagine if they’d had to flee to Egypt right then. That’s just miserable. No, in His mercy, God let the young family get on its feet before they had to flee.
2. In Luke 2:21-38, we read that Mary and Joseph took Jesus, the firstborn male, to the temple to make the proper sacrifice. If they’d been on the run from Herod, they wouldn’t have swung through Jerusalem on their way to Egypt.
3. If they hadn’t gone to the temple, Simeon and Anna wouldn’t have seen the Messiah. Yet Simeon had been promised he would see the Christ before he died. And he was given one of the most poignant prophecies about Jesus.

And Simeon blessed them and said to His mother Mary, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and as a sign to be opposed— and a sword will pierce your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” – Matthew 2:34-35

As much as it messes with our nativity scenes, God chose the perfect time for the magi to burst onto the scene.

I’m grateful for God’s timing for something small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things but important to me. This weekend, my son dropped his phone down the elevator shaft at the airport. But here’s the thing. He dropped at our airport – not where he’d been visiting. Not at a layover. So when we received the phone call this morning that the phone had been retrieved, all we had to do was drive to the airport and pick it up.  Thank you, Jesus, for your provision!