God in Time

The Christian walk is high-maintenance. By high-maintenance, I mean that it will require a lot of time, effort and dedication. The rewards are outstanding and nothing else in this world can compare. However, if you're looking for a religion that only requires a few hours each month, Christianity isn't the way to go. With Christianity, you're working with a living God, not just a set of rules. Relationships, especially your relationship with God, take time and regular attention to maintain. As you pour time into your relationship with God, you find yourself wanting more. You fall in love with Him, because He is already in love with you. I say all this because one of my current methods of maintenance of my relationship with God - a current method of spending time with Him - has been through reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Since the purpose of this blog is to share things with you, that includes sharing my current readings and the parts that strike me as particularly captivating/interesting/striking/wonderful! Here ya go!

I learned some really cool things about God the other day. Have you ever thought about God's relationship with Time? How does it work? He obviously thinks very little of Time, since He has eternal life. But C.S. Lewis took this thought a bit further.

"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 we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty - and every other moment from the beginning of the world - is always the Present for Him.

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 might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary is if she were the only character int he book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all. . .

God is not hurried along in the Time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along int he 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."

I'll be chewing on that one for a while.