When the Time Had Fully Come

The Turning of the Years

The turning of the year give us an annual opportunity to consider God’s gift of time. For this service we are paying special attention to the biblical concept of “the fullness of time,” a way of seeing the times of our experience—past, present and future—as vessels for God to fill—like goblets, perhaps—with the promise that God will fill them to the FULL. You may recognize the biblical phrase “the time in FUL-filled.” Take that literally. In God’s economy, time is not just filled, but it is FILLED FULL.

That is what we celebrate at the turning of the year. We start by looking at the past.

PAST

The year now drawing/drawn to a close—can you already begin to determine all that God has filled it with? Have you taken the TIME (since TIME is the topic at hand) to review the past year—to count its blessings?—to measure its disappointments? Can you see the hand of God at work throughout the closing year, filling your time to the full?

In our Old Testament reading, King Solomon took the TIME to acknowledge God’s past blessings. He did so in the form of a prayer, recognizing God’s promises FULFILLED. “Not one of them has failed,” Solomon prayed.

While you are reviewing the past year (and I hope you take the time to do that), it may be in order to look back even farther, to look back over your whole life, if you can, to see how God has FILLED that time—all of it—with his promises ... and then FILLED it FULL with his blessings ...

Beginning perhaps with the promises made at your Baptism:

• That God would be your heavenly Father, and you a beloved child, as we heard in our Epistle reading: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”

• That Christ would be your Savior: “In him we have redemption through his blood,” the Epistle went on, “the forgiveness of our trespasses.”

• That the Holy Spirit would be our constant Helper: “You ... were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance,” the Epistle assured us, “to the praise of [God’s] glory.”

The turning of the year gives us an opportunity to see how FULL that year has been ... and those that went before it ... FILLED with the promises of God ... FUL-filled in Jesus Christ. “The time has FULLY come.”

PRESENT

“When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son,” our worship continues to impress upon us, “born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

That’s talking about Christmas, isn’t it? The PRESENT, therefore, where we are right now.

How FULL has this Christmas season been for you? I suppose we could talk about all the activities we’ve been through—company, parties, services, meals, gatherings, presents ...

But the real purpose of the season (lest we forget) is that it is to be FILLED with JESUS! Again, the Epistle reading made that very point: What God set forth in Jesus Christ, it said, is “a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in HIM, things in heaven and things on earth.”

Perhaps it is no accident that our calendar—our marking of TIME—has its “hinge,” so to speak—its turning point—at the birth of Christ, which we have just celebrated again. What we celebrate this season is precisely the bringing together of past and future, B.C. and A.D., in the coming of Jesus Christ. In the very celebration of Christmas, there is a “fullness” that “unites all things in him.”

So ... are your holidays filled with Jesus? So many other things seek to fill them, things that avoid Christ or ignore him, as though the season is about snowfall and reindeer and warm memories.

Today’s Gospel reading snaps us back to the point, doesn’t it? “All things were made through HIM,” it said ... “and without him was not any thing made that was made.” The holidays are filled with Jesus Christ ... or they are empty! (And we might notice that one translation of the biblical concept of empty is “in vain.”)

What fills the present and makes it meaningful—what must fill it—is what we just days ago beheld in the manger, Jesus Christ!

FUTURE

And so, from the vantage point of the past, in which God’s promises have been fulfilled ... and the present, which God has filled to the full with Jesus Christ, born among us, in our midst ... we may look forward to the future, the year ahead, the years ahead.

And what we may observe is that THE TIME WILL BE FILLED!

• Filled with the blessing of God, as the past has been, as Solomon was so eager to lead us in confessing: the past has been filled with the blessings of God. Take the TIME this New Year’s, if you haven’t yet, to begin counting them. The past has been filled with God’s blessing.

• The future, therefore, ought to be filled with our response to those blessings. Again, Solomon shows us the way: “[God will] incline out hearts to him,” Solomon led us in praying, “to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments.”

Solomon prayed that in the future God would maintain his servant (Solomon, the king) and his people (that involves all of us) “as EACH DAY requires”—filling the time with praise and service to God, a day at a time ... and so a year at a time ...

UNTIL ... God’s time for us will be FUL-filled, filled to its absolute overflowing fullness, in the endlessness of eternity. If we have pictured time like a vessel—a goblet, perhaps—being filled until it is full ... now picture God tipping that goblet over ... and what flows out is a river ... widening into a lake ... growing into an ocean at last—ETERNITY! Life everlasting with the Lord who loved us from before the foundation of the world, who joined us here a baby born in Bethlehem, who conquered death at last to wash away the final barrier, whose Spirit has been piloting us our whole journey through ... until the ocean of eternity opens before us in endless blessing.

Then, at last, the time is FULLY come!