I was reading about steamships. It was a wonderful article in which the author said that the dream of a self-propelled ship had been a dream of humankind for hundreds of years. Then one day the time came when it was theoretically possible, but it was still not practically possible. The dream was kept alive for another hundred years or so by inventors and experimenters, some of whom were considered to be eccentric. Later on people looked back and said of them, they were just ahead of their time.

Then the times changed. The next person to come along was Robert Fulton. It was not so much that Fulton invented the steamboat, but that he just happened to be there when the time was right. As the author wrote, "The inventor's eminence may be more a trick of chronology than anything else, due to being active at the very moment when fruition was possible." It's a wonderful statement. It tells you that timing is everything.

That's what we learn from the Bible. Look at our lesson for this morning. The disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus, and ask, "Are you the one, or do we look for another?" It is a critical question for John. John has preached that the time has come. The Messiah, he said, is about to appear, so repent, get ready, put your lives in order. He has devoted his whole life to the belief that the time has come. But he is in prison now. He is about to lose his head. So he sends his disciples to ask Jesus, "Are you the one that we have been waiting for, or do we still look for somebody else?"