Religion: A Pastor Ponders

Good timing

By Pastor William Jenkins

January 5, 2007

I have two planning calendars before me. One is the old one of 2006 and the other is the new one for 2007. The old one looked like the new one a year ago. The new one will look like the old one a year from now. The new one has many clean, unmarked spaces for the days I will live in 2007. The old one has many marked up spaces for the days I lived in 2006. I have a collection of these planning calendars dating from September of ’74. These calendars are abbreviated journals, a record of things I have done, people I have known and places I have been.

As the clean spaces of the new calendar wait to be filled with new experiences memories of an August morning in 1974 come to mind. My wife and I were preparing to embark on our first trip to the Holy Land. The car was packed for the drive to New York where we would begin our great adventure. Every thing was in order except for our plane tickets. They were to have arrived in the mail and that had not happened. We had waited anxiously all week and on this day my anxiety had reached the panic level. What to do? I made arrangements for someone to check the mail and forward the tickets to us at a friend’s house in New Jersey. It was a dicey arrangement but it was all we had going for us.

We got into the car and as we prayed for a safe journey my wife shared a verse of Scripture she had read that week, Psalm 31:14, 15, “I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands.” She assured me everything would be okay. We pulled out of the driveway and noticed the mailman walking away from our mailbox. I pulled over to the curb, ran to the box and there they were! I came back to the car beaming. My wife said, “Our times are in God’s hands.” We have lived by that ever since.

I have begun to fill in the blank spaces on this new calendar with things already planned but I particularly like to anticipate the unknowns that will surprise me. At some point I know the entries will cease but that does not concern me because I also know my times are in God’s hands.

League City United Methodist Church is located at 1411 Main Street (FM 518), one block east of Interstate 45. For information, call the church offices at 281-332-1557 or visit the website at

HYPERLINK - http://www.lcumc.org