September is here, kids are back in school, and Labor Day signals the coming of the fall season. We’re all asking ourselves the same question: “Where did the summer go?” The stretch of time that was summer now gives way to cooler weather and more routine schedules as people return to work and school after travel and vacation. Did you do everything you wanted to do over the summer? Get all those things on your to-do list accomplished? For most of us, the answer is no. There’s a lot that we wanted to get done that did not get done.

I think of this with our congregation and plans we have to renovate and expand our church facilities. These plans include gutting the Fellowship Hall, Kitchen and Dining Room to make much-needed improvements. Additionally, plans call for a new Office Suite that will make it possible to open up the Narthex/Entrance area, providing new ADA-compliant restrooms and ensuring that our church facilities are ready to support the mission of Christ for years to come. This is a process that’s been at work for several years now. After a momentous decision in April 2024 when the congregation voted overwhelmingly to move forward, a capital appeal campaign took place in early Fall 2024 to generate funding needed to move forward. Since then, we have had a dedicated team of people who have been working behind the scenes with the civil engineers and architects to finalize plans. Our hope was to break ground for this exciting project this month in September 2025. That is not going to happen, according to God’s good timing.

Along the way, we have discovered that there were problems with what the county has on official record going back some forty years to when the current Education Center was built and then dedicated in June 1988. Although our church office staff did find what I call the “holy grail” of county records pertaining to this, there remain issues that need to be resolved to move the planned renovation and expansion forward. The best way to do this is to step through a Special Permit Amendment (SPA) process that will involve hiring a land use attorney to help us navigate our way through what the county requires. This SPA will clear the decks, so to speak, not only for whatever may be lacking with the current proposed work, but future work as well. Pursuing the SPA will, however, cost both time and money – exactly how much is still being determined. The long and short of this is that our planned groundbreaking for this month is now delayed until some future date. We have every confidence that this will all happen, just not as soon as we had hoped. It is according to God’s good timing rather than our own.

Within the world of music, there is an entire field of study devoted to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach - Wikipedia (1685-1750), whose amazing output of music was largely intended for church use. Bach was a Lutheran cantor; that is, a God-gifted musician within the church whose calling was to lead the congregation in song and music. One of Bach’s many cantatas is entitled, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (“God’s time is the very best time”), BWV 106, also known as Actus tragicus. Go to Bing Videos to listen to and watch the Netherlands Bach Society perform this early sacred cantata (in German!). Historians believe this is one of the earliest of Bach’s cantatas, going back to 1707-1708, well before Bach came to his primary musician post at St. Thomas church and school in Leipzig, Germany, where he spent many years. Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit was originally written for a funeral. Then as now, death can come suddenly and unexpectedly. Whether it is sudden and unexpected, or is something that we have been preparing for, it brings with it grief and sorrow. In the midst of this, our faith in the risen Christ enables us to say, “God’s time is the very best time.” Even when God’s timing does not align with our own timing and plans, God’s purposes for His people are all for good. The Word of God reminds us: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). All things – that’s important for us to remember. For the child of God, for those who love God, all things work together for good according to God’s gracious plan. In a world that we cannot control, in a world that seems like it’s spinning out of control, all things work together for good for those who love God.

I think of this Bach cantata, especially its title, in light of our own situation with a delay for groundbreaking with building renovation and expansion plans. Is this disappointing? Yes, it is, at least from our perspective. But we have to see this in the greater design of God’s gracious plan for His church and the lives of His people. We submit our own plans and purposes into the loving hands of our gracious Father, trusting that He will accomplish what He knows to be best at the right time. That right time, the allerbeste Zeit of God’s, may not match up with what we want to do and when we want to do it. That can be a frustrating place to be. What do we do? How do we respond? We can choose to rail and fight against the doors that close on us. We can also go back to the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which I think is the most challenging of all the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Whenever we pray this petition, we are submitting ourselves, our lives, and our plans into the hands of the Lord. That can be a very challenging thing to do. As Luther’s explanation of this petition puts it: “What does this mean? The good and gracious will of God is done even without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us also. How is God’s will done? God’s will is done when He breaks and hinders every evil plan and purpose of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, which do not want us to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come; and when He strengthens and keeps us firm in His Word and faith until we die. This is His good and gracious will.” That helps put things into perspective.

As the fall season gets underway, the congregation here will not have a groundbreaking as planned. Instead, we are regrouping for next steps of what we need to do to get to there at some future point. I’m choosing to see all of this as my friend, Johann Sebastian Bach, put it so beautifully: God’s time is the very best time.