It's about time
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven... -Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)
Maybe it's because I'm getting older. Maybe it's watching my mother get closer to her finish line. Maybe it's anticipation of the arrival of my second grandchild. Maybe it's opening my social media accounts and seeing preparations for a 40-year high school reunion. I've been thinking the last few days about the concept of time.
We've been taught that time is precious and not to be wasted.
Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure. -Psalm 39:4-5 (NIV)
We've been taught that we should wait for God in the short term...
Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you. -Proverbs 20:22 (ESV)
...and the long term.
But we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. -Romans 8:23-25 (NIV)
His timing is perfect...
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
...yet He doesn’t reckon time as we do.
But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. -2 Peter 3:8 (ESV)
Conceptually, I kind of get all that. But I have begun to see time as a blessing in other ways too. God doesn’t answer to time. He created it for our benefit. If we did not have years and seasons and days and moments, everything would happen at once. Can you imagine every trial, every challenge, every illness, every heartbreak you’ve ever experienced all happening at the same time? How hopelessly crushing would that be?! Or how about every smile, every victory, every hug, every acknowledgment, every expression of care and compassion that ever came your way being here in an instant, then over, with no time to savor and nothing else to look forward to?
Would the experiences be there and then gone, never to be remembered? Or would they be ever-present, the culmination of our highest highs and lowest lows side by side in a strange yin and yang existence? Here’s an odd thought that helps me wrap my brain around the idea: What if time, for God, is a big room with a mural on the wall where the entire history of all mankind is painted? He walks to any part of the room and knows what happened, what is happening, what will happen for every one of us.
So when Jesus died to pay for every sin that would ever be committed, He knew exactly what He was signing up for. And get this – He, being the artist of this mural, can erase parts of the picture He doesn’t want to see any longer. When Scripture talks about “remembering their sins no more” (Heb. 8:12), that’s actually possible for God.
I know this is a little “out there”. It’s one of those places my mind goes when I have too much time on my hands (get it?). It reminds me that God is so much bigger than me or what I can understand. And yet He knows and cares about me in my time, in my place, in my little corner of His big picture. And that. just. blows me away….