On This Day: That Time When Time Gave Birth to a Son

   “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)

   I marvel at the wisdom of God in deciding when it was time for Jesus to come into the world. We know this was planned before time was created. Peter writes that “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world” (I Peter 1:20). In Ephesians 1:3-10, Paul goes into great detail about how the things Jesus had accomplished were ordained before time began. 

   Now that I have this new thought in my mind (Jesus proclaiming that it was the favorable time for all the prophecies about the Messiah’s first coming to be fulfilled), I am mesmerized by his concluding statement, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The prophecy that the Messiah would announce the favorable timing of his own appearing was fulfilled right at that time, in that place, with those people, and all the conflicting thoughts that had to be processed. Jesus had just proclaimed to them that it was time.

   There is a way in which my last few decades of spending time with God in his word each morning have given me a sense of receiving each day what was the favorable time for me to learn something. In fact, the way God opened my eyes and ears to how he speaks through his word in May of 1992 was the favorable time for me to learn to relate to God like this before something hugely heartbreaking broke upon the shores of my heart, so to speak. And ever since, the things I have learned from God’s word each day have felt like the favorable time to learn them and put them into practice. 

   Today it really stands out to me what Paul wrote, 

“For he says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). 

This was Paul writing about something God said and did in the past to tell people in his present about what God was doing for them at that time, and it was recorded in God’s word in the past so it would stretch into the future and make every day the “favorable time” in the present for people to receive “the good news of great joy” that we now have a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

   However, as I shared yesterday, the emphasis is on Jesus as “the Word” sharing from the Scriptures as “the word” that he would “proclaim” this good news throughout the ages, but it would only benefit those who received him and believed in his name. 

   Jesus is speaking these words of hope to us again today, inviting us all to come to the Father through faith in the Christ and experience what has been so perfectly timed to speak to us today. 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)