I attend a Women’s Bible Study every Wednesday evening and we recently have been doing Beth Moore’s study, “Children of the Day.”  In the video we watched this week, she spoke of God creating time in the beginning when he created us. God, being eternal, is not limited by time. He has no beginning or end but always “is.”  CS Lewis writes of God being outside of time so this was not a new concept for me.  As a society, we move in increments of time and we often complain of too little time.  Time is fleeting and passing by all too rapidly.  Beth noted that we often see time as “going” but in God’s created time; it is “coming.”  Everything is moving toward one time that is to come when Jesus returns and His identity is revealed for all to see. Time is not counting down like the sands in an hourglass but counting up as on a stop watch.  It stops at the completion of the race.  God has a set time for the completion of His work on the earth.  When the time comes, the world that was once perfect will be made perfect again.  We will also be perfected and given resurrection bodies that will not wear out as our present bodies but will last forever.

Is this a “pie-in-the-sky” dream or is it a reality moving toward fruition?  No human will really know until it happens.  What difference does it make to believe that Jesus is someday returning? It doesn’t absolve us of responsibility to do our part for good in the world around us just because we believe it’s going to end anyway.  Some do look at it this way.  No, it makes it even more imperative to be God’s “salt and light” to the world.  This world is a mixture of good and evil.  If all good were taken away as the devil would like, that would truly be hell.  God is in and around everything shining His light in dark places.  His salt gives flavor in life’s most miserable of conditions.  Without it, there would be no hope. We are called to be God’s salt and light to the world. We are to be “hope-givers.”

But what if my beliefs are wrong and Jesus is not coming back?  Is everything I say and do in vain? I would still choose to do good as much as I am able and to hope in the One who is good.  To live otherwise would be to live with no purpose at all.  Everything would be vanity, a chasing after the wind as the writer of Ecclesiastes describes. Grasping after the riches of this world is like trying to catch the wind.  You try to hold on to it but when you open your hand, there is nothing there.  The atheist lives with no purpose but to please himself and that pleasure is fleeting.  All of us have inside us a need for greater purpose.  It is as if we are wired this way.  I believe we are.  Our true purpose is higher and our true home is elsewhere.  If we are willing to admit it, we know this deep in our being.  There is something more than the visible world. Our hearts long for God.  Where did this desire originate if there is no God?  How would anyone just make this up if He didn’t send messengers to speak of Him?  And what do we do with Jesus who claimed to be God?  Was he crazy?  Was he a liar?  How could a lunatic or one who is a deceiver change the hearts of men and change the world forever?  Jesus is the best revelation of the true nature of God.  He is love and He is mercy.  My heart will not let me believe otherwise for I have witnessed His spirit at work and am convinced that God is as real as the air I breathe.

I look forward with joy and gladness to the completion of time when Jesus will reappear but also with some trepidation.  Time will end. The old will be gone to make room for the new.  In the fullness of time when that day comes, I can’t look back.

Come Lord Jesus, come!