However, to live in such obedience is a choice we must make God will not force us to go His way. Being “the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13), He is certainly an expert on time, so we can have more confidence of always being in the right timing if we are following Him and striving to live in His divine timing.įirst off, it’s important to note that Christians have been called to put God’s will and thus His timing before even our own (Luke 22:42). For example, one of the things that this pandemic has taught us is that we are not always capable of predicting what could happen in the future that might drastically change people’s plans.įortunately, there is someone who is not surprised or taken aback by any “sudden” events: God. In a lot of similar cases, we can attempt to be smart about timing on our own, but we are limited in our ability to do this. This is the reason why students try to be punctual when submitting assignments, and why investors strive to put their money into the stock market in a timely manner. The bottom line here is, timing is extremely important. Marshmallows aside, Solomon talks about how there is also “a time to weep, and a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:4), “a time to keep, and a time to cast away” (Ecclesiastes 3:6), “a time to embrace,” and even “a time to refrain from embracing” (Ecclesiastes 3:5)-kind of like in the middle of a disturbing global pandemic. Fortunately, there will also be a time to enjoy your “marshmallow!” But it pays to wait for the delayed reward-and I am sure that the children who finally had a double portion of marshmallows can likely attest to the truth of this.Īs Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 3:1, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” Sometimes, you may be in the middle of some version of the “marshmallow experiment,” and thus be in a season of waiting. As such-like the children who were trying to wait for the better reward-there will often be the need to consciously fight the urge to do or not do something when you are waiting. People generally have a natural tendency towards immediate satisfaction. In several videoed duplicates of the experiment, you can see the determined faces of the children, showing their efforts to resist the delicious temptation before them in order to get the bigger and better reward that would come only after waiting. It is likely that most children strived to choose the latter option. In his study, the “Stanford Marshmallow experiment,” the children were each given the opportunity to choose either a single marshmallow immediately or two marshmallows after waiting for a set period of time. In 1972, Walter Mischel, a Stanford professor and psychologist, did an investigation into delayed gratification in children. " For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1
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