Time and Beyond Time

"Almost certainly God is not in Time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty--and every other moment from the beginning of the world--is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.

"That is difficult, I know. Let me try to give something, not the same, but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write 'Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!' For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.

"This is not a perfect illustration, of course. But it may give just a glimpse of what I believe to be the truth. God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world." Mere Christianity

When we pause to pray we enter into the "eternal now" of God's presence. Prayer, real prayer, is the solution to hurry and busyness in the present. It is therefore also the solution to anxiety about the future, and impatience. Furthermore, prayer can assuage guilt over the un-doable, irretrievable past, as we come into contact with the infinite and eternally valuable sacrifice of Christ which atones for all sin.

A few years ago, when I was going through a particularly difficult time in my life, I was sitting in a restaurant one day waiting for a friend. I began to look around at the people sitting at other tables in the restaurant as they were chatting with one another. Some looked distraught, as I was at that time. Others looked happy and full of life. The truth began to dawn on me, in a fresh way, that if God cared for me in my distress, then certainly he cared for each person in that room, and in fact, for each person in the world, in all the ins and outs, ups and downs, of everyday life. As Lewis points out, God has infinite time and power of attention to devote to every single person who has ever lived, is alive now, or ever will live on planet earth. That includes you, the person reading these words right now. God loves you, and he is listening to the whispered prayer of your heart right now.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!

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Will Vaus

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