Listen to our message on your audio player. Note: Yesterday morning I had a meeting and in my rush to get the message out I forgot to upload the podcast! It works now should any care to listen.

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son" (Galatians 4:4).

There's a page in each of our Bibles we don't read and probably give little consideration. I'm speaking of the blank page found in many Bibles separating the Old and New Testaments. Now, to be sure there may be another reason printers use this blank page and as more and more people read their Bibles on devices the concept of this blank page may not even be considered at all.

In the photo I took this morning you can see the blank page in my Bible. The left side is blank, although barely bleeding through is a graph showing the intertestamental period. On the next page it states simply "The New Testament".

Today let us consider this wordless blank page and what it represents.

A 400+ year period separated the final record in the Old Testament (Malachi) from the events in the New Testament beginning with Matthew's Gospel. In secular history this was when Alexander the Great lived during the Greek Empire and the ascent of the Roman Empire. There are also some extra-Biblical records during this period recorded in the Apocrypha.

The blank page represents several things I can think of such as silence and hope. But today we will consider waiting.

Do you have a hard time waiting? Are delays difficult to deal with causing you stress and anxiety? For most of us the answer is "yes." God had first promised the Messiah after Adam and Eve's transgression in the garden. Over the next several millenniums there was a growing body of Messianic promises that the Jewish people were given. But they waited and waited and waited.

At the time of Christ's birth two elderly Jewish people are mentioned in Luke who had waited in faith for the Messiah's coming. Simeon had been "waiting for the consolation of Israel", and Anna "spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem".

The daily text is Paul's incarnation account. He uses an intriguing phrase "But when the fullness of time had come" to describe that wonderful moment in space and time when God acted on our behalf in sending His Son for our redemption. The long wait was over. The faith of devout people like Simeon and Anna and others like them was now reality. God kept His promise.

And God still keeps His promises. He always will. He'll keep every one of them but certainly not always in the way we think He should. We have the perspective of looking back and seeing the fulfillment of the greatest of God's promises when "God sent forth His Son". This occurred after a long wait and not until "the fullness of time had come".

We must recognize that it's the fullness of God's time, not ours.

Many of us are waiting for God's promises to be fulfilled in our lives or those dear to us. The wait is very trying. Many are living with an ongoing burden for spiritually wayward family members, others have a long-standing physical ailment in their lives or in someone they love. And on my heart this morning are so many of our dear brothers and sisters living in very oppressive conditions.

We all wait for that next great cosmic event when Jesus again keeps His last word to us in Revelation 22:20 when He declared, "Yes, I am coming soon". It will happen in the fullness of time.

God has fulfilled the biggest promise. Let us wait with faith and assurance that "in His time" He will also take care of the scores of other matters we all deal with. He is faithful!

Be encouraged today, Hebrews 3:13

Stephen & Brooksyne Weber

Daily prayer: Father, thank You that when the fullness of the time came, You sent forth Your Son in the first advent. In this age help us to patiently wait for Your will to be fulfilled in our personal lives, in those we love, and in the world around us. May we be found steadfast, sober, expectant and alert as we await the day of Your second advent, Your promised return. In the precious name of our soon coming Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.