2 Timothy 4:2–4 - preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

There is a window of time to preach the truth. And then the opportunity may be lost. And you can’t predict when that moment of loss will come. Not only in our own lives but in others’ lives:

Job 4:20 (MSG): “These bodies of ours are here today and gone tomorrow,
and no one even notices—gone without a trace.”

Paul gets even more specific in these verses. Even within peoples’ lives, there are windows. People sometimes come to thin places where God’s presence and ways are near to them. But other times, people are far away, surrounded by nonsense teachings that dull the mind and ears to God. Years and decades go by without a whisper from God, sometimes simply because no one near them is speaking it:

Romans 10:13–14 - For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

We don’t know who we’re coming across or where they presently are in life. Paul says, “Preach the word.” Always.

God has no official business hours.

The words “in season” and “out of season” have the Greek word “kairos” as their root - eukairos and akairos - at the right time, not at the right time.

John 3:8 - “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

May we be ready. Because people are coming into our realm and the Spirit works at random times in random places through and to random people.

May we be people through whom he works! In faith, thought, word, and deed, may God wholly overtake us for his work.