Time Out

Revelation 12:14 NIV

The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the desert, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach.

Have You Been Sent To Time Out?

When I first arrived at the college where I would earn my degree, I came by plane, was picked up at the local airport by a college representative and dropped off at the dormitory where my room was on the second floor.  Carrying my two suitcases up the stairs, I was all alone.  I did not meet anyone in the lobby.  No one was in the hallway on the first floor; no one was in the hallway on the second floor.  I came to my room, which was empty except for two beds, two dressers, a sink and a phone on the wall and I tossed my suitcase on the floor and began to unpack it.  My roommate would not be arriving for two days.  I pulled the blanket and sheets out from my suitcase, made the bed and lay down on top of the covers, wondering what it would be like to go to school here.  Outside my window, I heard laughter and male and female voices chattering.  It sounded like there was a party going on below my room and I wasn’t invited.  I cannot say what is more lonesome.  Being alone in a great circle of emptiness or being by yourself when you can hear the crowds having fun without you.    That night, without a single soul to keep me company, two thousand miles away from my family, my church and my friends, I felt like I had been sent to time out.

“Time out” as an expression has shifted in meaning over the years.  It used to mean “taking a break”.  In basketball or football it is the term used for regrouping and talking about what to do next as a team.  It also has been the idiom for going off and having fun; taking in a movie, hanging out with friends, going dancing, eating at a restaurant.  The field of psychology embraced the term as a descriptor for a mild punishment given to a youngster who is disruptive or disobedient.  If a parent sends a child to time out, it means the child is ordered to go sit alone for a certain period of time in a boring place and “learn a lesson” about how to act properly.  Not many kids like being sent to time out and rarely do we adults either.  “Jail time” is the grown-up version of it.  A boring, inconsequential job is too.  Many of us feel like from time to time we have been sent to time out and it generally isn’t something we like.

The Bible is filled with examples of its most famous people stuck in time out.  Imagine what it must have been like for Joseph, the son of Jacob to wind up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and languish there for twelve years.   What about Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac who was left behind in camp at the foot of Mt. Moriah as her husband took her only child off to make a sacrifice to God somewhere out in the mountains.  She had to have noticed the taunt and grim expression on Abraham’s face as he shuffled away and wondered what was about to take place and why she couldn’t go with them.  Thomas, the apostle, suffered a sort of time out when for seven days he lived with the disappointment of being the only one of the Disciples not to see Jesus alive after He had been crucified. How about Moses and his forty years of time out after he had to flee Egypt and live in Midian?  Was it not a time out for Jacob, the father of the Jewish nation when he had to run away from his brother and live in near slavery, serving his uncle Laban as a shepherd?  How about the time out Mary, the mother of Jesus, experienced when she left her home in Nazareth to go stay with her cousin Elizabeth because she was pregnant and not married?  David wandered about in the desert wilderness of Israel almost ten years trying to avoid capture because the crazy king Saul wanted him dead.  Was that not a time out?

We almost always assume that when we are in time out, it is something terrible or at least frustrating.  Our time outs keep us from what we like doing, make us wait for something we want, take us away from exciting activities others get to enjoy.  When God engineers our time out, we don’t know what to make of it.  Is He cruel?  Am I out of favor with Him?  Have I lost my best and most productive years?  Am I wasting my life?  Sometimes and we must be open to seeing this is so, we are absolutely off base when it comes to understanding our circumstances. 

In 1889, a publication called The Literary Digest had this take on the automobile.  “The ordinary ‘horseless carriage’ is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course come into as common use as the bicycle.”  Dr. Alfred Vlepeau, speaking for the medical community in 1839 wrote, “The abolishment of pain in surgery is a chimera.  It is absurd to go on seeking it today.  Knife and pain are two words in surgery that must forever be associated in the consciousness of the patient.  To this compulsory combination we shall have to adjust ourselves.”  It was only seven years later that anesthesia was introduced into the medical world.  One more example to make this point!  The “Father of Radio”, Lee De Forest, in 1926 insisted, “While theoretically and technically television will be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”

Even the brightest and most highly educated among us can be and have been thoroughly wrong.  You too are wrong if you think God is wasting your time because you are in time out.  God cemented Mary’s faith in Him and His plan for bringing the Savior into the world while He wasted her time at Elizabeth’s house.  David developed a theology of what a good and faithful king should be when God wasted his time in the desert.  Jacob learned how painful it is to be deceived and the value of integrity when God wasted his time at his uncle’s house.  Moses learned patience and confidence in God when God wasted his time in Midian.  Sarah learned hope and trust in God’s goodness when God wasted her time as she waited for her husband and son to return.  Joseph learned mercy and forgiveness when God wasted his time in the Egyptian prison.

We are mistaken if we think this promise of God’s is just about the future!  It is about now, today.  For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV) Our Lord knows what He is doing with you at this moment, with the time He is wasting now.  You may not have any idea what that plan is and He may not tell you but Christ has thought this through and He has every detail, every moment that seems so wasted plotted out so that you will be exactly the sort of person He wants you to be when He gets this done.  Why did Jesus waste so much time being an infant, and then a child, a teen and a young adult?  Why not just be settled on earth as a man fully grown, get those disciples and in only three years save the world?  It is because God had a plan and for Jesus to save the world, He had to be a human being in every way…and that meant wasting His time being born, growing up and dealing with all the frustrations and pleasures of being an actual human being.

God has your life thought through in His mind and He has you right where you need to be so everything He wants to make of you can and will be accomplished. The Mona Lisa took time.  The Sistine Chapel took time.  The Golden Gate Bridge took time.  And you also take time to finish or to put it more precisely, to perfect.