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                A little boy once asked if God made the alligators.  The standard and predictable answer was given, “Yes, son, God made everything.”  Then the little boy responded with one more question.  “Why did He make them so mean?”

                Life is fraught with mystery.  Everywhere the question, “Why?” raises its head.  Why war?  Why poverty? Why disease? Why earthquakes? Why floods? Why human suffering and heartbreak manifested in a thousand ways?  All of these are questions to which we do not have an answer.

                We seem to live by the clock.  Everything seems to move at a hectic pace.  Highways are posted with minimum as well as maximum speed limits.  Deadlines loom.  Jet engines scream across the sky. 

                Our forefathers thought little or nothing about waiting a week for a stagecoach.  We tear our hair if we miss one section of a revolving door.  And, of course, we seem to carry the same hectic pace over into the spiritual realm.  I read of a church in Florida that advertises five-minute worship services for “people in a hurry.”  How many of our own parishioners would find that to be exactly what they were looking for?

                Sometimes we pray for something, and we not only make the request, but we set the delivery day.  We pray for a burden to be lifted or a wrong to be righted or a dream to be fulfilled.  Then we watch the clock and if God doesn’t punch in right on time, our faith begins to waiver.

                We need to remember that heaven’s clock is different from ours.  We operate in the realm of time.  God operates in the realm of eternity.  That means that God never has a time problem.  He never has too little; He never has too much.  Not so with us.  Sometimes the days are too short.  The time is so quickly gone and there remains much to be done.

                Sometimes the days are too long.  An elderly person sits alone at home. The doorbell almost never rings.  The telephone is silent.  No sound of a human voice.  It seems that the day will never end.  And when at last it does, sleep comes as a welcome release.

                But God contends with neither of these problems.  He is never late.  He is never early.  He is always right on time.   So, in our venture of faith, we must exercise patience.  We must understand that the experience of the moment cannot be interpreted in isolation.  It does not tell the whole story.  We live and function in the realm of time.  God moves in the timeless realm of eternity.  It is inevitable that at times we will misunderstand.  This too is a mystery of life here on earth.  But it is a truth we need to accept.

                I remember a story about a college freshman.  He had started to study botany and horticulture.  On Thanksgiving break he came back home to the farm.  He and his father took a walk, while he talked of the things he had learned.  He said, “Dad, I’ve figured out that God made some mistakes when He made the world.”  “Really, son?  How’s that?”  “Well, take for example this oak tree.  It’s big and strong and its fruit is a tiny acorn.  And over there is a fragile vine, and its fruit is a heavy pumpkin.  Now wouldn’t it make more sense to put the tiny acorn on the fragile vine and the heavy pumpkin on the sturdy tree?”  About that time a breeze stirred the oak tree, and an acorn fell and hit the boy on the head.  To which his father said, “Thank God it wasn’t a pumpkin!”  Though we may question, dispute and doubt, God’s way ultimately proves to be the best.