Timeless.

Every once in a while I allow my mind to wander back a bit. Back a few years to a different place, a different job, a different season. And maybe my mind wanders back to then and there, when, come some Friday night, in my current here and now, I don’t have plans. So, I find something for myself to do, trying not to remind myself that the overwhelming majority of my friends and relations don’t live by me.
I try not to miss them.
Here and now is more solitary than then and there was.
And my mind will, more often than not, wander to a dinner table owned by some of my very dear friends, around which gathered quite a group of us who would have the best of times.
The talk was always everywhere, all over the place.
Music, books, Jesus, crazy stories, future plans, past adventures, laughter, coffee coffee coffee, laughter and then more, and tears and great food and political disagreements and what has become some of my favorite memories.
Memories my mind wanders to.
Misses.
And some of those times had an essence to it that was almost otherworldly, for, dinner would start at, say, 7, and when I would look at the clock, what seemed like 20 minutes later, it was 2 in the morning.

And none of us had noticed that we had sat there for 7 hours.

It was as if the night was----timeless. It felt like 20 minutes but the clock said 7 hours, yet I still felt like I wasn’t sure which one to believe.

Which, I suppose it you think about it, timelessness is otherworldly.

Or have you ever noticed the opposite?
When you are waiting waiting waiting and you are sure two hours have passed, when, to your chagrin, you find it’s only been 15 minutes?

In a funny sense of the word that, too, is timeless.

Our experience seems to transcend the clock, making a mockery of time.

You know, I have noticed that human beings have a tendency to take things and attempt to conform them to their will.

Do you know what I am talking about?
I do it all the time.

We will take something someone said and twist it to our liking.

We will take something someone said and twist it to make them look like the bad guy.
We will take some consequence of our sin and find someone else to blame.
We will find some reason for why ever relationship we enter into ends up being broken, never once considering that in all of those situations WE are the only common denominator.
We lie to cover something we did that we shouldn’t have, just to save face.

Situation Manipulation.

All of it.

But one thing that really bothers me is when people will take something that God said in his Word and manipulate it so that it fits into whatever their view of truth or justice or love or time or whatever is.

Now, that is by NO means me saying that I do not do this.

I will be the first to admit it.
I do not do it intentionally, however, please know that, but I am human, so of course I do it. Let’s be honest.
Which, just a note, is exactly the reason why you should probably never believe more than something like 80% of what I say, just for good measure.
 : )

That being said, one thing that I have heard manipulated is a passage of scripture that, while I knew they weren’t right about how they manipulated it, I also didn’t know how to make sense of it either to give a rebuttal.

Until a few weeks ago when I was missing my friends from the “then and there” in this “here and now.”

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (II Peter 3:8)

“For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4)

So, the deal is that I have heard people using this verse, of all things, to try and prove creation wrong.

Something about the “7 days” maybe meaning a thousand years because, well, “to the Lord a day is like a thousand years,” they say, “so how can we really know what he meant?”

Ummm…..no.

If for no other reason, neither of those verses talk contextually about creation.

Ergo, that’s not what it’s referring to.
Just for future reference.

Glad we settled that point.

But, as I said, for the longest time I could not wrap my brain around this concept either!

What does that even mean?!

Then, like a wisp of something floating in the air, one day I was praying about something very TIME-ly, and I was caught up in how God is absolutely not constrained by time.

He created it, he doesn’t exist in it, it is only a tool for him not a problem or something to work around, he never races a clock.

I was telling a friend about this little comfort when all of the sudden it hit me what those passages are really talking about:

                                God is eternal, he therefore is timeless. To him a day is like….a thousand years, and a thousand years is like….a day. Time means nothing to him.

Because what else can eternity or being eternal possibly be than the absence of time? It has no beginning. It has no end. He has no beginning, he has no end.

Then that removes eternity from being like anything that which is governed by a clock.

Just like all those dinners with friends. It exists somewhere outside the realm of the sun going up and the sun going down. Time meant nothing, it was not an interruption.

When speaking about Heaven and eternity I have heard people say a few common remarks. “Well, I just hope the time goes fast until my loved ones meet me in Heaven,” or “Eternity? I am supposed to worship God for eternity? Won’t that be a little boring? Is there going to be nothing else to do?”

On top of both of these being a little pessimistic, I knew the argument had to be missing something other than optimism.

As humans we are so constrained by time. Fixated on it, annoyed by it.

That is not like God. He has his own timing.

Praise the Lord. Are you not so glad he doesn’t play by the same rules we go? That what grates on us and wears us down doesn’t do the same to him?
He does what he wants, when he wants, always working the good.

And so, the only thing I can think, then, is that when we get past this life, when we shuffle off these times that bind us and enter into eternity, will we have God’s view of timing. Because only then will we understand true Timelessness. We get glimpses of it during dinners with friends sometimes, which, I believe are God-ordained to make us know that a realm outside of this ticking-clock world exists; it gives us a hunger for eternity.

I see all of this coming to complete understanding in a picture like this: I can imagine me “running into someone” on the streets of gold in Heaven and them asking, “How long have you been here?”

To which, having forgotten about time completely by this point, living in a timeless realm, I would have nothing else to say but, “Ummm….I’m not really sure. It might have just been since yesterday. But then again, it might have been a thousand years. It seems that here one is exactly the same as the other.”