God’s Timing

A welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

The devotional reading for today, titled, God's Timing, was written by Lesley Coe. Mag had been looking forward to her planned trip to another country. But, as was her usual practice, she prayed about it first.

It's just a holiday, a friend remarked. Why do you need to consult God? Mag, however, believed in committing everything to him. This time, she felt him prompting her to cancel the trip.

She did, and later, when she would have been there, an epidemic broke out in the country. I feel like God was protecting me, she notes. Noah also relied on God's protection as he and his family waited in the ark for nearly two months after the flood subsided.

After being cooped up for more than ten months, he must have been eager to get out. After all, Genesis 8.13 says that the water had dried up from the earth and the ground was dry. But, Noah didn't just rely on what he saw. Instead, he left the ark only when God told him to. He trusted that God had good reason for the extended wait.

Perhaps the ground wasn't completely safe yet. As we pray about the decisions in our life, using our God-given faculties and waiting for his leading, we can trust in his timing, knowing that our wise Creator knows what is best for us. As the psalmist declared in Psalm 31, I trust in you, Lord.

My times are in your hands. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Genesis chapter 8 verses 1 through 5 and 13 through 18. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

Now picking up at verse 13. By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.

By the twenty seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. Then God said to Noah, Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you, the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground, so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.

So Noah came out together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. Would you join me in prayer? Heavenly Father as we make our plans would you help us to faithfully look to you for guidance and be ready to change those plans when we sense that you are redirecting us. We echo the psalmist's words declaring our trust in you and also acknowledging that our times are in your hands. May we find peace and confidence in knowing that you, our wise creator, always knows what is best for us. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name that we pray and trust. Amen.