Perfect Timing

This past week I had the awesome privilege of being reunited with a dear friend from my youth. John and I parted company back around 1992, approximately 18 years ago. Last night sitting in Tim Hortons laughing at old stories, floods of memories returning it felt like not a day had passed! My dear friend still holds a precious place in my heart and I didn't realize this until I had heard his voice on the phone this week.

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Yet a small part of me felt resentful, almost like I'd been robbed of a treasure for the past 18 years. There had been times when I had tried to look him up; Google searches for his name, his brother's name, his sister's name had come up empty. As far as I had known he had fallen off the planet! It didn't seem fair that I had to go for so long without this special friendship when for much of that time we really hadn't been far away from one another.

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But then I looked back at the things I'd been through in the past 18 years; the relationships I'd been in, the cities I'd moved to, the careers I had chosen, the personal growth I've experienced and more than anything the relationship I've developed with God over the past 3 years. John truly is a special guy and I don't know if I would have fully been able to appreciate that before God had done all this work in me. I look back and realize that I didn't see it way back when; perhaps if I had we never would have gone our separate ways.

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And this all brings me to the conclusion that God's timing is indeed perfect. He is neither too early or too late. I can mourn the years of friendship lost, however I think I'm not doing God justice if I don't recognize that our moment of being reunited was intentionally saved for such a time as this. And knowing my dear friend and his knowledge of music from another day, this quote from Ecclesiastes 3:2-8 (borrowed by The Byrds) is more than perfect for the occasion:

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A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to plant and a time to uproot,
A time to kill and a time to heal,
A time to tear down and a time to build,
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
A time to search and a time to give up,
A time to keep and a time to throw away,
A time to tear and a time to mend,
A time to be silent and a time to speak,

A time to love and a time to hate,
A time for war and a time for peace.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB6jhbtDUZE&feature=related - listen and be blessed!