God Is: Revelation 1c

"God is."

I have worked with school-aged kids before, tutoring them on language arts skills. To say that the phrase "God is," is a complete sentence, would be tough for many of them to grasp. In fact, a lot of adults would argue the point. They would say "God is . . . what?"

But you have it right there. A subject: "God"; and a predicate "is." No object is needed for the verb "is." The sentence really just states "God exists." But the simple verb "is," while smaller and of a more basic apparent meaning, seems to say a whole lot more than that God simply exists.

"God is," is a complete sentence. It is also a very simple, basic, and small sentence. Yet it is packed with more meaning than we imagine. In fact, it is perhaps the most meaningful and relevant sentence possible, in the English language.

It is what God really was saying to John:

I am Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, the Is, the Was, and the Will Be, the ruler of all.

We have written about the power of, and importance of Now, as a concept. Now is really all that matters. If we say that God is, and that Now is more important than "before" or "after", then we come to realize that God is fully present, fully here, fully relevant - and although we cannot see Him, He is more real than we are.

If we can imagine a place of eternal Now, (which is really what eternity would have to be, after all), then we are in a sense proving that there is an Eternity. To suggest that no beings are already in that place, a place that we can only imagine, is the peak of human arrogance.

When we contemplate the reality of Eternity, then we also have considered that there is a God Who resides there already (and Eternity, we should note, is by definition a realm of which we are only a subset. We may be there already - we just have not been transformed into creatures that can access it).

Our understanding of what is to come, in Revelation, must be tempered by the knowledge that only Now counts, really. God prefaces a prophecy of what is to come, by declaring that our focus must be kept on Him, the One Who, simply, is.