Reflectionary XXII

For one day in your courts is better than a thousand in my own room...
 - Psalm 84:9

A friend of mine quibbles over one distinct detail about the timing of God's Plan for the Ages. He frets that Christ did not return during the First Century. He asserts that Christ, and all the New Testament writers, promised the faithful that Christ would return in their lifetime.

And since Christ didn't return then, my friend finds the Bible guilty of one conclusive error that has thrown the whole thing in doubt for him. 

To have faith means that there are some things we do not, can not, understand. How does a finite, mortal being grasp an eternal concept?

Scripture is full of God's people being required to wait, sometimes for years, even decades, before God would make His next move. Think about Abraham, already an old man, being told one day that his descendants would number as the stars. And then God disappears and goes silent for fifteen years.

Or how about Moses, wandering about for forty years, making no discernible progress towards God's plan for his life.

Joseph sat in a prison for years.

Jacob waited fourteen years to be married to his true love.

John the Revelator spent probably decades alone on an island, expecting Christ to return any second. He never did.

Now consider Adam. God said "On the day you eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, you will die." But of course, he didn't die that day. 

We've all heard the phrase, usually in movies about organized crime: "You're a dead man." Usually this is said to a living person. But we know what is meant. It means your as good as dead. And so it was with Adam. On that day, he became mortal. He began to die.

So the same thinking needs to be applied throughout scripture. When God says something; when he prophesies something; when He promises something, it is as good as done. In reality, it has already been done in eternity. And this is the essence of faith.

When you realize that a day with God is like thousand of our days, then we have begun to get the meaning of God's promises. You cannot be a mortal and attempt to reason out immortal concepts. Just have faith. Believing is seeing.