Sunday, July 3, 2016

July 3, 2016 - Time

Twelve Score ago our fathers brought forth this great nation. A score is a unit of time that is rarely used today, it represents 20 years. That means 240 years ago our nation was formed.
Time is a necessity, we all live by it.
But what is it REALLY?

Time to a giant redwood tree is very different than time to most insects.
The tree has been around for centuries, the insect exists in a lifetime measured in days or weeks.

Time to us is also based on our lives. 
To a child time passes in segments compared to their existence, a year is 1/4 of the time a four year old has lived.
To someone in their 90s, like my Dad, it is but another flash of their many years of living.
For this reason, time DOES, in fact, pass by faster as we get older.
So we should all try to slow down and live at the pace of a child, live through experiences and those things so easily ignored, just like we did when we were younger.

But time itself is just a man-made way to describe change. We base time on the spin of the Earth and the changes from daylight to darkness. And, in a larger scale, on the travel of the Earth around the sun and the seasonal changes which that voyage brings.

What we have to keep reminding ourselves of is that,
God doesn't live by our standards.
This is one way that keeps us from truly understanding God and our relationship with Him.
Abraham is a perfect example of how God's time sometimes doesn't match human time.

Genesis 17:17 NLT
“Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. “How could I become a father at the age of 100?” he thought. “And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?””
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I can relate to his disbelief!
I often wonder what would happen if someone from the past were to suddenly be alive again and experience the world today. Or if I could travel back and live in another time myself. I believe both experiences would be frightening to the traveler in time. We live when God wants us to live, and experience the things God has prepared us to experience.

The bible tells us many stories of trials, doubts, joys, and sadness but the people involved lived in THEIR time. God prepared them for what they were to experience.

It is important to remember this in our own trials, doubts, joys, and sadness. God has prepared us to live in our time, with our experiences. He has put us into the interconnected web of this world precisely at the time we are meant to live, God makes no mistakes.

So, how many of you have experienced moments, like I have, when you question why something has happened in your life? Or, how you will ever be able to make it through the trial you face? Remember, God has no connection to human time, He is beyond the concepts of days or seasons. Yet He speaks to us through scripture in our language, and reminds us of His presence and His plan for us.

‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3:1-11‬ ‭NLT
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 
A time to be born and a time to die. 
A time to plant and a time to harvest. 
A time to kill and a time to heal. 
A time to tear down and a time to build up. 
A time to cry and a time to laugh. 
A time to grieve and a time to dance. 
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. 
A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 
A time to search and a time to quit searching. 
A time to keep and a time to throw away. 
A time to tear and a time to mend. 
A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 
A time to love and a time to hate. 
A time for war and a time for peace. 
What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”‬

Part of building our faith in God and accepting His sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is to stop trying to see things in our time and have faith that He will guide us in His time. This is the only way to understand His world of eternity with our human minds that live within the boundaries of human time. We will always fail when battling our time in this world, but with God, all things are possible. God makes no mistakes.