Timing is everything. Except in Real Estate.

I have come to realize that life is a lot about having the right timing.

When I first met Sandy I had creepy long hair and had naired a cross in my chest hair after losing in a ruthless game of cut the deck (thank you very little STEVE). Needless to say, she was not impressed. A few years later when our paths crossed again, her standards were apparently significantly lower and the rest is history.

When we try to do something and the timing isn't right, it rarely works. Often, it makes it difficult to ever get it done. When we moved to Assumption, Sandy was pregnant with Jack. A lot of projects got started and finished and (no matter what Sandy tells you) most of it was done by yours truly.

One such project was painting our living room. We painted three rooms a color that I will call light brown and the fourth wall was supposed to be a color I call dark brown. After all the moving of furniture, taping of edges, painting of walls, cleaning of messes, and returning of furniture, we were burnt out on painting for quite a while. As a result, we had three light brown walls and one white wall with a small dark brown "test" patch for over two years. It was a bad time to try to paint that room. Afterwords, we knew the amount of work that it would take - especially with a big bookshelf, large living room furniture, and an awkward, messy computer desk on that wall - to get it painted. For the room to finally get painted, it took me taking the initiative to paint it while Sandy was out of state for a wedding as a surprise for her return.

At times, when we try to accomplish something at the wrong time and in an inappropriate setting, it means we simply fail to actually complete it. As I type this, my son is crawling over me and trying to hit buttons on the key board. Now he is pointing at the screen saying, "Stop sign is right there. Bird is right there. Stop sign and bird! Stop sign and bird!



I had to wait for him to find another distraction before moving on.

I also had to go back and fix a few things he messed up.

Allow me to talk about church for a moment. I think that we often try to accomplish important, meaningful things without much regard for timing and experience less success than we hope for. Sunday morning services are about being together corporately. We sit together, we are led to sing together, pray together, learn together, and more. These things work, when done well, because the timing is right. We are in a large group (even 30 people is large in this sense) so the things we can do that are meaningful as a group are basically those things that are intended to be corporate. Those things where we are acting together as one unit.

On the other hand, you can't have conversation with 30 people at one time. Obviously, the larger the number, the more laughable the idea becomes. You would probably not share much in the way of personal emotions or struggles in that setting - not with all those people at one time. If you tried it would be more of an announcement than anything. Real relationships and community are built outside of that setting. Any semblance of relationship building at the standard morning service happens in the halls before and after.

Faith is about more than singing and listening. Its about living and doing. It is about tipping the scales from selfish to selfless. Whether or not we get that done as a Church, well that's all about timing.