Timing is So Important
When I was a boy, we called them seventeen year locusts. I believe their scientific name is cicada. Regardless, every seventeen years they tunnel up through the ground, crawl upon anything which will support their “armor-like” shell, shed their shells, and take to the air with their newly acquired wings. High up in the trees they mate, thus fulfilling their purpose. All the time they emit a high-pitched sound which fills the summer air for several weeks.
The other day, there at my feet, was one of these cicadas. It was either fifteen years too early or two years too late for the Cincinnati area. Talk about poor timing! Whichever was the case, too early or too late, its purpose for coming to the surface was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill because it was all alone.
Feeling a bit sorry for it, I picked it up and put it high upon a tree. I had no sooner walked away when a blue jay came along and snatched it up – a delicious evening meal.
CONSIDERING that cicada, I thought about how important timing is in our lives. God moves in our lives but never intrudes. He presents opportunities but never forces us to act upon them. They come as clouds in the sky; ever moving, ever changing, never there forever. If we act upon them too early or too late we miss our chance and find ourselves unable to fulfill the purpose God has given to us.
Rev. Wendell Mettey
9/18/1989
Revised 10/8/2013
