Tuesday 6th December
Read Isaiah 57:15 and Revelation 4:8
“For this is what the high and exalted One says –
he who lives for ever, whose name is holy:
‘I live in a high and holy place,
but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and to revive the heart of the contrite.”
“Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all round, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:
‘“Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God Almighty,”
who was, and is, and is to come.’” (NIVUK)
What do you understand ‘eternity’ to mean? Does it refer to infinite expanses of time or does it refer to timelessness? Or does it mean something else entirely, as yet incomprehensible? The Scriptures refer to the high and exalted One ‘who lives for ever’ (Isaiah 57:15a), ‘who was, and is and is to come’ (Revelation 4:8b). God calls Himself the ‘I am’ – being itself. The ever-present One.
So how are we, human and ever-changing, meant to understand the nature of eternity? Augustine was one who wrestled with such ideas and perhaps provides some clues to how to think about time at least. He reflected in his ‘Confessions’ that perhaps time itself is part of creation. A profound insight that Einstein provided some evidence for with his theory of relativity – the concept of ‘space-time’.
“If any flighty mind wanders among mental pictures of past times, and wonders that you, the all-great, all-creating, and all-sustaining God, maker of heaven and earth, should for countless ages have refrained from doing so great a work before actually doing it, let him awake and realize that he wonders at falsities. How could they pass by, those countless ages, which you had not made, although you are the author and creator of all ages? Or what times would there be, times not been made by you? Or how did they pass by, if they never were? Therefore, since you are the maker of all times, if there was a time before you made heaven and earth, why do they say that you rested from work? You made that very time, and no times could pass by before you made those times. But if there was no time before heaven and earth, why do they ask what you did then? There was no “then,” where there was no time.” (Augustine, Confessions 13:15).
Perhaps Augustine was before his time?
But perhaps we also need time to reflect on how the eternal, ever-present one entered time in the incarnation, and changed with time from vulnerable baby, to toddler, to teenager, to man, yet remained ever-present from before time?
