Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
My Bible tells me that God exists outside of time. God created time. God works in and through time, but time does not affect God. Scripture says of Jesus that “his goings forth have been from of old, from eternity.” It says in another place that a thousand years are like a day to him.
The Lord’s experience of time is necessarily different than ours because he is the one who created it, the one who owns and controls it. On the other hand, here we are, stuck on earth, clicking through moments one second after another.
We can’t speed it up when we’d like to skip over stuff. We can’t slow it down when we’re enjoying ourselves. Compared to the Creator and the eternity that he inhabits, the span of our lives is like the mist you breathe out on a cold morning, which hangs there for a second and is gone.
That vast difference between ourselves and the Lord should, if we’re wired right, help put things in perspective for us. It’s kind of mind-blowing when you think about a being who stands above time itself, as its ruler, when all we ever experience is being bound to it like slaves.
These concepts can also trick us, though, and tempt us to think wrongly. We can be tempted to think, since God doesn’t experience days, years, and centuries like humans, that probably means that God is out-of-touch with how it feels to be stuck here in the middle of it.
How can a Creator for whom a thousand years is like a day understand what it’s like for us to deal with lasting suffering in our lives?
Well, the good news is that he knows better than you think. Not only does he know better, but he thinks your time is important.
In Luke 13, Jesus was in a local synagogue on a sabbath, and he healed a woman who had been afflicted with an infirmity for 18 years. His enemies got upset because he healed on the holy day, when they were required to do no work, but only rest.
He rebuked them. They fed and watered their animals on the sabbath, not making them go a single day without those things. But they hated that the woman was set free.
Here’s where you need to pay attention: He said, “And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16)
In the original language, there is added emphasis there. “Lo” means, “Hey, look at this.”
Then the words “18 years” carry another, special emphasis. Jesus stresses the time. Listen: Think about how long this is. Eighteen years!
Jesus, the Creator of time, walked through time on earth the same way you do. He knows. The omnipotent God experienced suffering, pain, grief, and the agonizingly slow passage of time. Your own sufferings, for as long as you have been going through them, are not lost on him.
He walks with you through the valley, for as long as it takes. He doesn’t stand on the far edge waiting for you. Your time matters to the Savior.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: