Audio reading of this post
“But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
2 Peter 3:8
“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
C. S. Lewis
On the New Year: Reflections on Eternity1
Human recollection is a fickle thing. We quickly lose memories. For an event that occurred recently, we can recall more. But for an event that was further away, our minds hold blurred memories; mere snapshots and vague remembrances of atmosphere. For instance, in my first year of high school, our class went on an overnight tramp to Waitawheta. I can now remember snapshots of verdure, glimpses of swift rivers, chiaroscuros cast by swaying trees, a starry multitude residing in the night sky, glowworms nestled in rocks, the excitement of playing tag outside the hut, and an inordinate amount of tomato sauce ordered at a fast food joint. I still remember small details, like an elderly stranger advising me to roll up my sleeping bag because it would damage the seams less. But most of my memories have been consumed by time. Think of similar examples for yourself. How much could you remember right after the event occurred, and how much can you remember now? Perhaps there is a nostalgic veil over the entire thing, and you cannot remember much more.
Though human memory swiftly evanesces like a firework, God is different. The Scriptures tell us in bewildering, fascinating, and terrifying fashion that “from everlasting to everlasting [He is] God” (Ps. 90:2). “[W]ith the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Pet. 3:8). God “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). Traditional Christianity has interpreted these passages, along with a multitude of other passages, as teaching the eternity of God. Geerhardus Vos, the great Reformed Dutch theologian, described the eternity of God as the “attribute of God whereby He is exalted above all limitations of time and all succession of time, and in a single indivisible present possesses the content of His life perfectly (and as such is the cause of time)”.2 What I want to centrally focus on here is the phrase “in a single indivisible present”. This concept, upon further reflection, is mind-boggling. Let me explain.
God sees everything, every point in time, as a “single indivisible present”. He sees all events as present, whether past, present, or future. With equal lucidity, He sees the birth of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He sees the giving of the Ten Commandments on Sinai and the conquest of Canaan. He sees the period of the judges and the kings. He sees the moment Balaam’s donkey speaks and the amazement on Balaam’s face. He sees Elisha retrieving the axe head by making the iron float. He sees the old men weep in Ezra’s time as they see the new yet inferior temple. He sees the looks of the wise men as the heavenly chorus appeared before them and the helpless look of His Son’s face as Jesus lay in the arms of Mary. He hears Christ’s cry in Gethsemane and sees Him hanging on the cross. He sees the moment death was conquered and Christ was risen, and Christ’s ascension thereafter. He sees the wildfire spread of the Gospel from Jerusalem to Judea, from Judea to Samaria, and from Samaria to the ends of the earth. He sees every event in church history and secular history. He sees the birth of every single human for all time, your birth included. He sees the death of every human, your death included. He sees the wedding of every human, your wedding included. He sees every firework ever launched in a New Year’s celebration. All of the aforementioned, He sees as a “single indivisible present”.
It is an incredible thought that God sees you in your birth, death, the current reading of this article, and an uncountable number of other events equally presently. If you were to think of it too much, you would probably go mad. I do not say this as a mere intellectual exercise, though it is very much philosophically and theologically interesting. The main point I want to draw out here is that we should spend our time for the Lord of time. Though there is indeed no “maverick molecule” in the entire universe3, it is likewise true that there is no maverick nanosecond. If God is sovereign, and He is, then the entirety of time and all the clocks in the universe must bow to Him. He is not only the Lord of great mountains, rolling valleys, efflorescent galaxies, playful kittens, swaying trees, and energetic children. He is the Lord of nanoseconds, milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, decades, centuries, and millennia. He is the Creator of time who placed us in a temporal world where we grow old and die, and He did not do so arbitrarily.
We ought to give up our clocks as a “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1). We ought to spend our lives living coram Deo, before the face of God.4 As N. D. Wilson so wonderfully said, “Lay your life down. Your heartbeats cannot be hoarded. Your reservoir of breaths is draining away. You have hands, blister them while you can. You have bones, make them strain-they can carry nothing in the grave. You have lungs, let them spill with laughter… I have around 250,00 conscious hours remaining to me in which I could be smiling or scowling, rejoicing in my life, in this race, in this story, or moaning and complaining about my troubles. I can be giving my fingers, my back, my mind, my words, my breaths, to my wife and my children and my neighbors, or I can grasp after the vapor and the vanity for myself, dragging my feet, afraid to die and therefore afraid to live.”.5
I will add to that quote by saying that our time, and indeed our times, are perpetually ebbing away. Seconds solemnly and steadily stream by like water molecules in a raging torrent. Stop and think about it. Imagine yourself on a bridge, with your head looking down at a rapid river. Imagine that the river is made up of your seconds, days, and years. Accept that one day, and only God knows when, the river will dry up, awaiting resurrection. To switch the metaphor, imagine a tree in autumn with leaves coloured red, yellow, and green. The leaves are falling. Eventually, there will come a season in which the tree is barren. It will have no more leaves. It has no time left. It is awaiting the next season of life. That tree is you. Your seconds, days, and years flow away from you and onto the fertile ground of your life’s work or lifeless concrete. Your seconds, days, and years fall away from you, like leaves from a tree or seeds dispersed from a plant. Whether those leaves or seeds will be useful, whether they land on fertile soil or rocky ground, is up to you.
But we should not use our time in a hurriedly legalistic solemnity. We should not take up asceticism and monasticism, hiding away in some secluded village or living in an elevated monastery. We should give up every fibre of our being as a living sacrifice unto God (Rom. 12:1), desiring foremost to glorify and find our joy in Him and finding our joy in Him in order to glorify Him forever.6 It is not that we should perpetually shut ourselves in a library full of dusty tomes, but that we should work, laugh, and savour God’s Creation. We should work, laugh, and partake in joy, all unto God’s glory. When John Piper wrote of a Calvinist: “See him on the shore: / ‘Whence this ocean store?’ / ‘From your God above, / Thimbleful of love.'”7, one of the points is that the Calvinist is indeed on the shore, enjoying God’s Creation, realising that it is a “Thimbleful of love”. Our time should be spent well, but God’s glorification is not only found in the toil of work but in enjoying life’s beauty. Our time should be used holistically, encompassing all of this life, the life God has given.
And then, by God’s grace, this verse may be said of us, like it was said of Piper’s Calvinist: “See him nearing death. / Listen to his breath, / Through the ebbing pain: / Final whisper: ‘Gain!'”8 Or as Paul says: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” (2 Tim. 4:7-8). And Paul could have added: “I have used my time in a way that glorifies God.”. Paul’s point is not that there were never times when he wavered. He, too, was sinful. It is that the general direction of his life was oriented towards God. We should not work ourselves into a legalistic fervour by trying to gain God’s favour through our packed schedules. But because of God’s favour, when He saw us at our lowest, slothfulness included, yet still loved us (Rom. 5:8), we spend our fleeting, falling and flowing seconds in heart-oriented service toward the Triune God.
Footnotes
- One of my inspirations for this article was N. D. Wilson and his books Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World and Death by Living: Life Is Meant to Be Spent. I do not recall that he mentioned the notion of eternity, but his repainting of other doctrines lucidly and practically has been immensely memorable.
- See Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics: Theology Proper.
- This phrase comes from R. C. Sproul.
- See Sproul’s article for more: https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/what-does-coram-deo-mean.
- From N. D. Wilson’s Death by Living.
- I believe this modification on the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism was suggested by John Piper.
- See https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-calvinist.
- From the link above.