Time!

Mon., Mar. 21/22

Clocks ahead… clocks back… clocks not changing at all. What time is it? Well, that depends. My birthday, on a Wednesday, but not in China. Fly to Beijing and I was born eleven hours later, on a Thursday — not in evening, but in morning!

WHAT TIME IS IT? Depends on perspective. In fact, its all very arbitrary. A year on earth may average 365 days… Earth days that is, 24 hours, the approximate duration of the planets single rotation, and an hour being determined by a fraction of its 40,000 km circumference. All of these numbers are something entirely different on Venus, or Mars, or on any other orbiting orb.

Watch a movie, read a book… time passes differently. Look back on a book once read or a movie previously seen and from the perspective of memory the whole thing is known instantly! It’s all relative.

God is eternal. He sees things from the perspective of eternity. For God, time does not exist! In fact, if I read my Bible rightly, He invented it! He invented time for us.

“In the beginning… the earth was formless and empty… And God said, “Let there be light,” …God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.” (Gen. 1:1-5).

Peter, in writing of the certainty of the coming Day of the Lord, reminds his readers of the timeless context of the Almighty. “Do not forget this,” he writes, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Pet. 3:8). Christ Himself “Alpha and Omega,” Unchanging, always Beginning and End, simultaneously, eternally. That is what it is to be the “Always” Being.

So when we here below quibble over first and last I wonder, is God amused? Is He distressed? Does He long for the revealing of that day when cloud will become clear and we will be eternal. There is no need of time for eternals.

But now… now we dwell in time. Our Lord watches to see what we will do with it. Waste it? Invest it? Redeem it? Volunteer it? We have been given time too as a grace. A space in which to acknowledge Him. A time for salvation! A time that will very suddenly be passed.

“Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Cor. 6:2).

What time is it for you?

Press on…