Riverside Chapel Seventh-day Adventist

Are You Ready for Marriage?...Continued from page 2
A.J. Kiesling
Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer
In the Fullness of Time …

One of my favorite lines from a movie comes from Romancing the Stone, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. In it, protagonist Joan Wilder, a romance novelist, talks to her literary agent on the phone about finishing her latest book. The emotion of the story has brought her to tears. Hearing her sobbing through the line, the agent teases her, calling Joan a hopeless romantic. “No,” she counters, “hopeful. I’m a hopeful romantic.”

The first time I heard that line it sank deep into my spirit, and somehow it has stayed with me across the years. It’s like seeing the glass half-empty or half-full. Which one are you? A hopeless romantic, frustrated by years of singleness stretching across the canvas of your life, or a hopeful romantic, living your life to the fullest, yet seasoning every day with a dose of expectation?

In the past year or two God has brought one special phrase from Scripture into sharp focus in my life, again and again. The phrase I’m talking about is that innocuous passage we read in the more narrative parts of the Bible: “In the fullness of time…” I am not a patient person. It’s something I’ve struggled with my whole life. But one thing God keeps doing to nudge me closer to patient is remind me of His always-just-in-time calendar of events. I look back over the course of my life and marvel at how often something I prayed for, yearned for, waited for, cried for finally came to fruition—but not a moment too soon. Why did You take so long, God! we lament, railing against the heavens like Scarlett O’Hara in the radish garden. But if we’re honest we’ll probably see that God’s actions in our lives, and the lives of those we love, occurred just in the nick of time. Just at the right time. In the fullness of time.

The phrase reminds me of a woman carrying a child. Happy to be pregnant, she grows weary by degrees as the months of pregnancy draw on, but always before her is the expectation of her baby—the culmination of her hopes in the fullness of time. In a similar way, God places just the right person in our lives at just the right time. Maybe your life is not ready for a spouse at the moment. Perhaps you have quite a bit of “housecleaning” to do before He can bring a special man or woman into your life. Start praying and moving in that direction.

On the other hand, remember that a single day can change the entire course of your life. You may wake up tomorrow and see a face you’ve never seen before—and in that face you might meet a person who changes your life forever. You may be closer to that “fullness of time” than you think!

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