1:38 am. I’m awake and I feel pressured. Certain things need to be finished. Important things need to be completed. I still have time, yet I still feel rushed by time.
Then I think, God is not rushed by time. He is not limited or constrained by the hours in a day, the days in a week, the weeks in a month, the months in a year, the years in a lifetime.
Time is his “unbounded now”. Therefore, eternity is, you could say, always present.
He can give me a word to speak at the moment I open my mouth—even before a word is on my tongue he knows it. He can in an instant change the direction of my steps or change the direction of my path—He hems me in on every side and watches my coming and my going. He can suddenly open my eyes to see what I should do—He has before I had breath prepared good works for me to walk in.
God is not rushed. We are rushed and pressured when before us everything is limited and constrained by what we can see and understand, by what we can manage and do, by where we can go and how fast. And so we push harder to see and understand and accomplish more.
But why should I be rushed when time is in God’s hands? Why should I push when he is the Beginning and the End? Our obsession with time lessens the more our heart trusts in God. Worship is the best time management tool.
Do you think about your day more than about God? Or do you find yourself thinking more about God during your day? Do you find your thoughts and your words rising to God more than you find them falling on the clock? We must learn to trust God in time, with time, and over time.
God doesn’t give you an amount of time to live; he gives you a life to live. Eternity, then, is not endless time, but abundant life. Not quantity, but quality. Not enough, but fulness. If we cannot imagine the eternal feast, it is because we have only ever feasted on the crumbs that fall from the table into time.