Pondering Time
Revelation 13:8 (New International Version)
8 ... the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world
As a child, the stories I loved best, often involved a child, or a group of children, finding a way to go back to the past. In one story, a child went to stay in an Elizabethan manor house that had been in her family for centuries. It had a beautiful and fragrant herb garden and a maze. Somehow, through magic that happened only to children, she traveled back in time and had adventures with past generations--from the Elizabethan era, then Cavaliers and Roundheads, and so on. It was fascinating to imagine that this might actually be possible.
As an adult, I've pondered the fact that images of events on earth long past, might be traveling to in light to distant stars, or that the stars we see in the sky are actually no longer the way they appear to us, in images that are really of a universe long ago.
Time--if it exists for God, doesn't seem to exist in the way we think of it. The way God tells the story of redemption in the book of Revelation--the time sequence doesn't matter. It's as if God took film clips from the throughout the story and randomly edited them together in a sort of abstract mosaic.
We can be so constrained, by comparison, in our thought patterns. God makes a colourful, breathtakingly beautiful crazy quilt and says, "This is the story, from beginning to end--my Book of books."
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (New International Version)
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Revelation is Ecclesiastes 3:11--the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:15 (New International Version)
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
This is Revelation--whatever exists today and whatever will exist in the future has already existed in the past. For God calls each event back in its turn.
8 ... the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world
As a child, the stories I loved best, often involved a child, or a group of children, finding a way to go back to the past. In one story, a child went to stay in an Elizabethan manor house that had been in her family for centuries. It had a beautiful and fragrant herb garden and a maze. Somehow, through magic that happened only to children, she traveled back in time and had adventures with past generations--from the Elizabethan era, then Cavaliers and Roundheads, and so on. It was fascinating to imagine that this might actually be possible.
As an adult, I've pondered the fact that images of events on earth long past, might be traveling to in light to distant stars, or that the stars we see in the sky are actually no longer the way they appear to us, in images that are really of a universe long ago.
Time--if it exists for God, doesn't seem to exist in the way we think of it. The way God tells the story of redemption in the book of Revelation--the time sequence doesn't matter. It's as if God took film clips from the throughout the story and randomly edited them together in a sort of abstract mosaic.
We can be so constrained, by comparison, in our thought patterns. God makes a colourful, breathtakingly beautiful crazy quilt and says, "This is the story, from beginning to end--my Book of books."
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (New International Version)
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Revelation is Ecclesiastes 3:11--the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:15 (New International Version)
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
This is Revelation--whatever exists today and whatever will exist in the future has already existed in the past. For God calls each event back in its turn.
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