21. We are surprised by time in our joys and our sufferings
It is said that Christ “was chosen before the foundation of the world”, and “eternal purpose and grace were given us in Christ Jesus, before the beginning of time”.1 Peter 1:20, 2 Timothy 1:9. Our minds cannot fathom “before the beginning of time” - before Adam, before The Fall. But God knew there would be a need for redemption well before His creation, before this earth existed. So God did not hastily think up contingency plan when sin came in.
We understand eternity as a continuing of our time, and we can learn about that. We know that God does not enjoy keeping us in the dark about His future with no facilities or faculties to see the bright eternal light ahead, but He does recognize our limitations. We only see in the glass darkly. We are time bound, and will only make sense of the overall picture when our bodies are changed, when history has run its course. “All things work together for good”, is only true from the big picture for everything does not now work together for good. From the small picture of our time bound lives, good things are not working together and producing more goodness, for we see goodness assailed on every hand by evil. The teaching, Romans 8:28, is a comfort for us now, but the earnest is in the future, for we realize that then we will not be running about in chaos in this world. We do know that now Someone is guiding us toward that order of goodness and eternity, when all things will work together for good. Isaiah in 7:14 and 8:10 explains to us that He will be with us in His son. “Immanuel”, or “God with us”, until that day when He “shall quicken mortal bodies”, by his Spirit which dwelleth in you”. Romans 8:11.
Why are we constantly surprised by time? It goes slowly as we wait out an evil torment. Nothing seems to change and our lives are twisted like the tortured willow vine. Or it “goes quickly”, we say, when we know it does not. We marvel at growth. “That‘s grown quickly” we say, or “look how she’s grown”. So our present measurement of time still puzzles us. We have either a paucity of time, or plenty of it, but that is our reflection on it, and experience of it, not the quality or quantity of time itself. Time remains constant and measured and never changing. No one can put into words how and why our perception of time changes, from when we are young to when we are older. It is a self experience and no one else’s. Perceptions continue to change, either by surprising jolts over the experiences in our lives, or gradually, as we age when life teaches us more gentle lessons. Time is flexible in our minds, but inevitably more precious as we age.
When doubts do set in, and we feel faith failing us, it is not wise to bury those feelings under a mountain of work, or some other distraction, because denial does not help the wound to heal. We need to speak of our need, so with the compassion of others, and with the reflection of His face in their care, we can regain our own insight. Then when we are healed we know how to imitate that, casting the lifeline further on to those who are now doubtful and needing their faith fertilized. There is an old Arab saying which observes how “we sprinkle sugar over death”. As we kiss the hurt of a child “to make it better”, so we seek to sweeten the tragedy for those in the sour of grief, helping to fill the raw void with good things towards a recovery for those who are grief stricken.
Job, Abraham, Joseph, David, all had divine communication from God and then with His seeming silence they worked through the testing times. We are told about the end of some faith people in Hebrews 11, for example “stoned” and “sawn asunder”. It seems that they hung on to the divine connection with the promises until they died, even though it might seem to us that He might have abandoned them. They seemed to get their strength from the unseen world and regarded it as solid as the visible world which often seemed to be caving in around them. “The world was not worthy of them” and “God is not ashamed to be called their God”. There are bewildering times for all His saints, when God seems silent. But when there are doubts, then faith slips in. So if there were not the doubting times, then the faith times could not slip in, to give faithfulness time to prevail, and be fertilized and grow and expand and become part of our being. Therein is the joy of it, when we thought there was no joy. Our freely offered faith is now a joy reflected back to Him.
