“Whatever past achievements might bring us honor, whatever past disgraces might make us blush, all have been crucified with Christ and exist no more except in the deep recesses of eternity, where “good is enhanced into glory and evil miraculously established as part of the greater good.”
― Brennan Manning
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.
~ Solomon, King of Israel, in Ecclesiastes 3
When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent. I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Me in Your own Presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed.
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, In John 17
Oh beloved, it is true. We miss it, but not because it is hard to see. We miss it, because it is everywhere. We are, those of us who have cast ourselves upon Him alone for our salvation, part of another time. We are, actually, those who live completely outside of the subset that we call time. We are eternal.
To miss this, is to completely miss what our salvation is about. For in missing it, we come to believe only in the temporal transactions that we partook in to be “saved” in the first place. We do, to put it simply: put our faith in our faith.
Oh it is definitely not wrong to believe that Jesus died for our sins. For this is completely and both utterly and unutterably true.
It is definitely not wrong to believe that when this part of our life is over, that we have the opportunity to live in the new heavens and the new earth. This is true.
It is not wrong to believe that the words of the Bible are completely true and authoritative. They are, and to follow them is to find where this writer is trying to go with this blog entry.
Beyond time.
The problem with our faith and our beliefs and our thoughts about our destiny are not that they are wrong. The problem is that they are totally incomplete if we take them as elements of our our puny little existence for this breath of a 70 or so years on this planet.
And if we hang our hope on something incomplete, we not only risk our faith, we guarantee that it will fall short of the real thing. And if it is not the real thing – it will most surely falter – if not fully damn us to a destiny we did not expect.
Can we see it? We must, if our faith is to be upon its proper object. Our faith is not in some code contained within the 1300 or so pages of some book. Our faith is upon The Very Person of The LORD Jesus Christ.
This Person is eternal.
This Person created time.
This Person will bring time to a close.
This Person actually created eternity and infinity as a construct to interface with mere existence.
This Person IS the context for our existence.
And forever is but the doorstep into the adventure we will have in Him.
Yeah, this is where i am trying to go with this entry. G_d, the everlasting Captain of vast corps of angel armies. This everlasting I AM. This unfathomably enormous Triune One. This G_d, is the One who knows us personally and is reaching out to us in invitation to a personal relationship.
So, does it feel like your faith is faltering? Perhaps it is time for you to change the temporal context of your belief. Do this, by realizing that time is only a part of eternity – but that eternity will fully subsume time in its flow. Tonight is your night beloved. Time to believe much bigger than you ever have.
Forever.
