TIME

What is time? It has been said before that time is money. But that is not the kind of definition I am speaking of here. In its essence, what is time? Let me help you out a little here. If I were to take all watches and clocks away from you and put you into orbit around the earth in a space ship of some sort, what would time be then? Sunrise and sunset would lose much of its earthly application. If sunrise and sunset were removed from our present understanding of such, what would a day be? What would a week be? What would a month or even a year be then? You might would argue that a year is the time it takes for the earth to complete a revolution around the sun. Okay, let us back our spaceship a little further into space, let us say, outside of the Milky Way and let us re-ask ourselves the previous questions. Time, as I understand it, is very earth and sun relative. Even baking cookies with modern equipment is dependent upon this earth/sun relationship. You can set a timer and your coffee might be waiting for you when you wake up. You can set your alarm and you can make it to the doctor’s office “on-time”, whatever that means. Never-the-less, time as we know it, is very earth centered.

Try this on for size now. Outside of our “world”, does time even exist? Or maybe from another angle, is time, as we know it, in the big picture even relevant? There will be no night in heaven. Heaven is for eternity. Time, seems to me, would sort of lose its relevance at that point for sure in the broader scope of things.

Jesus, when speaking to the Jews, made this incredible statement. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”(John 8:58) A statement that speaks of his deity as much as his eternality, both ideas being mutually inclusive. And yet we cannot overlook the implication that time does not constrain God. God does work within the time construct. He moved the sun back a few degrees in the Old Testament. Surely time was affected. He stopped the sun from going down for Joshua. Surely time was affected. And yet Jesus’ statement speaks that he is so much greater than time itself.

I surely have just begun to embark on my personal journey of attempting to understand something I am sure only God fully knows. But none-the-less, it does have at least one spiritual, practical application. God is never early, never late and dare I say never even “on time”? Why? Simply because God is! My comfort is not that God is going to show up, but that God is ever present. If He chooses to reveal himself through visible activity, that visible activity should not become the expression of my comfort but rather the affirmation of my comfort. Why do I say this? Because so often, we construct scenarios in our minds that God has to show up when we say or ask him to show up. Should not it be enough to acknowledge that He has always been there (and will be) even when Balaam's donkey does not speak.

Luke