I. Our times are in God's hand in this sense, that He alone has chosen for us the period of the world in which we should live. Feeling that God has placed us in this age that we may make our impress on it, we should prepare ourselves faithfully for doing its work.
II. Again, our circumstances and the direction of our lives upon earth are in God's hand. We are standing while the generations that rose up by our side are sleeping in the ground. We live because it is God's good pleasure that we should still have a work to do and responsibilities to meet.
III. We shall see that our times are in God's hand if we consider how impotent comparatively we are in respect to all the elements around us, how liable in a moment to be called hence.
IV. Our times are in God's hand as to the opportunities enjoyed both for personal improvement and for conferring benefit upon others. God speaks to us through our opportunities.
V. Again, we are not our own. We may have wisdom, learning, wealth, power, influence, and yet we have not power to lift for one hour the veil which hides the future from our view. (1) Our ways are not under the control of our friends. (2) Our times are not in the hands of our enemies.
If God thus encircles us by the agencies of His providential power and grace, then (1) we ought to feel our dependence on God, not on man, not on the best-laid plans. This sense of dependence should keep us in the attitude of prayer. (2) Only by realising this great truth do we prepare ourselves either for great happiness or great usefulness. The God in whose hands our times are holds the times of all other human beings, holds all agencies, directs all events according to the counsel of His will, and we shall be successful only when we place ourselves directly in harmony with His laws. (3) What a source of comfort it is when we can believe fully that our times are in God's hand! If we feel we are resting upon the bosom of Omnipotence, what can disturb our repose? It may be that the very evils which some of us fear are only the occasion of working out some good. In all ages the men who have done right have been successful.
Bishop M. Simpson, Sermons,p. 39.
Reference: Psalms 31:15. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 333, and vol. vii., p. 1.