One person walking with God is in the majority.
~Graham Cooke
For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, “Be gone!” And He will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and bread, the produce of the ground, which will be rich and plenteous. In that day your livestock will graze in large pastures, and the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground will eat seasoned fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. And on every lofty mountain and every high hill there will be brooks running with water, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the LORD binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow.
Oh beloved, it is true.
There is a future for us, but there is none for Him. Oh, it is not that G_d is stuck in the now, it is that now is actually forever. We can only experience it in a given moment, but He was, is, and will be experiencing all of it – always. And, while this is one of the most difficult aspects of understanding what G_d is like, it is also one of the most comforting. For, it is said more simply like this: All of G_d is everywhere and always.
We are a bit less trans-temporal. Actually quite a bit. We can only exist in the infinitesimal moment between the time dimension’s past, and it’s future. This actually makes our four dimensional existence to make sense. We are born. We grow up. We grow old. We die. And, all along the way, we learn that He is with us, but we are constantly trying to see over the horizon, to the next thing that He has for us.
Actually, it would be impossible for our minds, as they are currently composed, to comprehend a life where things did not flow in one direction. We are driven by time. Linguistics. History. Sports. Conquest. Most things… all flow from the past, to the future.
Can we see it, though?
Life in Him, is really not about what is next. However, G_d is more than willing to accommodate the dusty frames and brains we inhabit. And, since He is already in the places and times we are going, He works to help us find our way there. This is the beauty of His sovereignty over everything: He is never predisposed to “control” us. It is more like a safe passage through the thorny thicket of nearly-infinite possibilities.
Wonderful that G_d is infinite. Any number is “smaller” than Him. So, He is always right.
This is a gorgeous; even lavish gift from Him. An Infinite, Triune Being speaks to us, and tells us which way to go. He keeps us safe on the path, even when we are in physical, or financial, or other danger. He is with us – and He is already where we are going.
And so, as we come through the clouds of a situation, we can look forward a bit – and “call the ball.” Yes, this term is about aircraft flying onto a carrier. But, it is actually a really good analogy. The pilot (us) is using all his or her capacities to find the right approach to the one piece of real estate in a very large ocean, that give him or her any chance of survival. The landing signal officer (G_d) is taking in a huge number of variables and guiding the pilot and his plane onto the place where he must go… As the LSO does his job, and the pilot listens, the pilot will break through the fog and be able to see the final signals and lighting to get him where he needs to go. But, it takes faith and obedience to the LSO for this to all work. Yes, the pilot lands the plane, but without an LSO, he has almost no chance of success.
So, are you struggling with the future? This fool of a writer has been for a few months now. But, as i intentionally work to listen to Him, He is guiding me in. I am in a place where i can “call the ball” on the next landing spot in my life. It has been quite foggy for quite sometime, but the landing lights are beginning to glow bright.
Tonight is your night. Let Him guide you. He is already on deck in your next landing zone.
In God there is no was or will be, but a continuous and unbroken is. In him history and prophecy are one and the same.
~A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)
