God's Sovereign Timing

[I will get back to Ephesians as I have time, working around my counseling supervision.]

God is the author of every story, but sometimes He gives us clearer glimpses of His sovereign hand and timing at work in our lives for our good and His glory. He recently gave me one of these glimpses.

Almost a year ago, a friend from church suggested we have a Christmas wreath-making get together for Christmas 2025. In October, I sent an invite out to the women in our church to see who was interested in learning how to make their own Christmas wreaths the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

For the past ten plus years, I have ordered wreaths from a friend’s daughter who sold wreaths to raise money for her gymnastics competition expenses. She’s in college now, so making my own wreaths was a great option this year.

For the past five or six years, I have been getting a wreath for my dermatologist because she has taken incredible care of me through my numerous biopsies and melanoma diagnosis. She is a Christian and has become a sweet friend.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, six of us assembled in my garage and learned how to make wreaths. We had an encouraging time of fellowship and a profitable time of making our wreaths. It was fun to see the varied themes each person created.

Usually, the wreaths from the fundraiser came the week after Thanksgiving, so with a busy Thanksgiving week, I planned to deliver my dermatologist’s wreath after Thanksgiving like I had done previous years.

Two Mondays before the wreath-making, I had surgery for melanoma near my collar bone. The Tuesday after wreath-making, I noticed that the skin seemed to be growing over the stitches even though it wasn’t quite time for the stitches to come out. A nurse friend from church volunteered to remove the stitches the next day as she would be working. Her office is in the same complex as my dermatologist, so I decided to deliver the wreath before Thanksgiving.

My friend texted me the day of and asked if I could come in at 12:30. I stopped at my dermatologist’s office first, a little before noon. The waiting room was empty. Normally, because it is busy, I drop the wreath off at the front desk, and one of the receptionists delivers it. Since it was almost lunch time, the receptionist said she would see if my dermatologist could come out.

She did. She had tears in her eyes and said, “How did you know I needed to see you today?” She hugged me, and I whispered, “God knew.”

She told me her Mom had died early that week. The memorial service was taking place the day after Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving is my first major holiday without my Dad. I could understand her fresh grief and trying to face the holidays. We talked a little in the waiting room. I hugged her and promised to pray for her.

Despite the hurt I felt for my friend, I also walked out of the office with thanksgiving, marveling at each of the details God had sovereignly, lovingly put in place for that exact moment of comforting one of His daughters through me.

Many of you know the different accounts of Daniel’s life. In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar had a troublesome dreams. He called the magicians to him to not only interpret the dream but to tell the king what the dream was. The magicians told the king it was too difficult to tell him what his dream was. Nebuchadnezzar became furious and commanded all the wise men to be destroyed. However, when the king’s agents came for Daniel, he requested the king to appoint him a time that he might show the interpretation to the king. Daniel went back and told his three Jewish companions to seek God’s mercy. God revealed the mystery to Daniel, and he responded with a prayer (Daniel 2:1-19).

²⁰ Daniel answered and said:

       “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,

to whom belong wisdom and might.

²¹    He changes times and seasons;

he removes kings and sets up kings;

       he gives wisdom to the wise

and knowledge to those who have understanding;

²²    he reveals deep and hidden things;

he knows what is in the darkness,

and the light dwells with him. ^[1]

Daniel’s prayer reveals his understanding of God’s sovereignty even over times and seasons. He understood God’s wisdom, knowledge, and omnipotence at work with His sovereignty. In God’s sovereign timing, He placed Daniel in Babylon, as one of the king’s wise men for that specific time to bring God glory and for Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah’s good (vs 46-49).

As I have been mulling over all that God did through making a wreath this year, two thoughts have stayed with me.

First, I could clearly see God at work, bringing many things together for that moment of meeting my dermatologist in her grief, but how often am I, we, so caught up in the busyness of life that we miss how God is working? We miss the opportunity to glorify God and share with others what He has done because we aren’t looking expectantly for what He is doing.

Second, with Christmas approaching, we focus on or are distracted by many things, even good things. We celebrate Jesus’ incarnation and hopefully praise God not just for baby Jesus in a manager but Jesus who came to suffer and die in our place that we might have eternal life.

But how often do we forget God’s sovereign hand and timing surrounding Jesus’ birth? Paul wrote in Galatians: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). The Father determined the time for the Son at the exact moment in history, fulfilling His promises.

At least forty-eight prophecies were fulfilled surrounding Jesus’ birth. That doesn’t randomly happen. It was God’s sovereign hand and timing.

There was relative peace in the Roman Empire, providing the right circumstances for the Gospel to go forth (Acts 16:6-10; 17:21). The Romans had also established infrastructure throughout the Roman realm, facilitating the spread of the Gospel. Also, due to the Roman rule, the Jewish people were looking for the promised Messiah to deliver them. The Roman ruler Caesar Augustus issued a decree for everyone to be registered in their own town which resulted in Joseph taking Mary to Bethlehem.

The shepherds didn’t just happen to be in the fields. God sovereignly placed them there that night and sent the angels to proclaim the good news to them. Although we do not have details, we know the wise men came from the East, likely Persia. It would seem that they knew Daniel’s writings which included a prophetic timeline for Jesus’ birth (Daniel 9:24-27). Again, we don’t have Biblical details, but it is possible that Daniel’s exile to Babylon, where he wrote the prophecies God revealed to him, placed him and the written prophecies in a region the wise men, hundreds of years later, could more easily have had access to them. And, since the wise men were following the star (Matthew 2:2), they also likely knew of Balaam’s prophecy which cited “a star shall come out of Jacob” (Numbers 24:17). However, the wise men knew, God sovereignly provided the information.

We may not know the details, but God does. He was faithful to every one of the prophecies concerning the birth of Jesus. He was sovereign over events going back to Adam and Eve’s original sin in the garden and every moment in history leading up to Jesus’ birth.

Let’s put some of this in perspective. Professor Peter Stoner outlined the probability of one person in the first century fulfilling only eight of the clearest Messianic prophecies. The number was 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000 (1 in 10¹⁷). Stoner then calculated the probability of one person fulfilling 48 prophecies: 1 in 10¹⁵⁷. Beyond that, Jesus fulfilled over three hundred prophecies in His lifetime. God did it! This should evoke awe and wonderment of and praise to our glorious God.

The miracle of Jesus’ birth is infinitely more miraculous than any other birth in human history. We tend to narrow Jesus’ birth to the now picturesque scene of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus in a stable with the star above and the shepherds and animals worshiping. But this year, expand your wonder and worship to all the prophecies and preceding events and conditions as well as the much more that God did in His sovereign timing that we don’t know because He is God and we are not.

Reflection

1.    Do you have a personal example of God’s sovereign hand and timing? Share it as a way to bring glory to God.

2.    What about Jesus’ birth do you typically focus on during Christmas? How do you see God’s sovereign hand and timing in those things?

3.    As you think beyond the actual birth in the stable, what are new truths of God’s sovereign hand and timing that leave you in awe and wonder?

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Da 2:20–22.