the Requiest

This all started with a thought on the way into work this morning.

1. If God is the originating author and creator of time…
2. And as such if he, like many past theologians have believed remains (*in his fully godly state) outside of time.
3. Then how does he perceive time?

Without trying to argue this point for I believe far greater minds than mine have done all the wrestling that man is able too; reference Augustine, Edwards, Ockham and the list goes on and on.

My question to myself was and remains, how does Jesus Christ my Lord, the Second God Head of the Trinity view the Cross? We (Christians) love to use phrases like, “returning to the cross”, “throwing myself before the cross”, “holding on to the cross”, etc. All of these are present tense. We understand the Cross of Christ as something that happened 2 millennium ago and yet at the same time we see it in it’s on going power to forgive not only my present sins but those yet committed. In that sense as Christians we see that one incident (the Cross) in time spanning not only our own past but the past before it occurred and then forward thru all eternity.

So if we see that incident, that act, flowing thru time past, present and future; how does God see it, He who resides outside of the flow of time?

My thought as well as what leads to my question is that God “sees” all time as now. If God sees all time as now, then God sees the Cross eternally. It has always been before him and always will be.

Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “OK, so what?” Isn’t the “so what” then the fact that God is not only seeing it but is in that sense reliving it eternally? We see Christ’s act upon the cross, past tense. God has seen Christ’s act upon the Cross and will see it thru all eternity. Christ’s atoning sacrifice was only a one time action to the man Christ. To Christ of the God Head it’s an on ongoing act.

Now I’m not trying to bring up some heresy that’s already been discounted and which I know nothing about, no what I’m trying to point out in all of this is that when I sin. When I fall short and grieve the Lord my God. I am responsible for putting him back on that cross again. Over and over and over until he comes once again in final glory.

And maybe that’s the way it is until the end of time. Until that day when time itself ceases to exist and eternity is all that remains. Perhaps at that point the Cross will also cease to exist for there will no longer be a need for it.

Until then.

*I believe that as the “man” Christ, God fully experienced linear time in the same manner that we do.

Ed is the morning teller at the Burger King drive thru that I sometimes hit on my way in to work. We’ve both seen each other enough times now that we have established a friendly acquaintance that allows for a hearty, “have a nice day” that actually has some heartfelt meaning behind it.

Now Ed is an older gentleman (I’d guess pushing close to 70), balding, a little short and a bit on the portly side. Given that he works at a Burger King I’ve sometimes wondered if this is his semi-retired gig. I mean you just can’t live around here on the kind of change a teller is going to make at a quick food palace. So the other day when he mentions to me that he won’t be here next week because he’ll be in Hawaii I was a bit taken back. So I bluntly asked him, “What did you do in your former life that you’re able to afford to go to Hawaii?”

His answer is the kind that always blows my mind, because it just shreds what ever assumption you may have developed based on someone’s looks or current financial situation. Apparently when Ed was a younger man in the early 60′s he was a French translator with the military stationed in Hawaii. He was there as a translator during some atomic bomb testing. While stationed there he picked up surfing. Now we didn’t have time to really chat long but the little he did say made it sound like Ed really turned into a bit of a surfing bum.

Now as to how that leads to going back to Hawaii. According to Ed once you hit retirement age in surfing circles you become a judge. So Ed is heading to Hawaii all expenses paid to judge a surfing contest.

Go figure.

I love talking to older people and hearing some of their stories. They never fail to dispel what ever notions I’ve concocted of them.