Eternity

Time is a funny thing, but so is eternity. Somewhere, somehow, we've settled on the idea that eternity begins the day we die and stretches on forever before us. We just have to get there.

We're living toward eternity without realizing that eternity is already in us.

Eternity is today; it is now. In a world marked by time, we already have forever. We're already living it. It happens when we get lost in a good story. It happens when we lose ourselves in a moment. In fact, what I suggested yesterday about counting our lives in moments and breaths? That is the essence of eternity. That's what it means to live timeless.

It's dangerous thinking, to forget this eternity. We think today shall pass away, that it's just temporary. That everything we do today or don't do today will be inconsequential tomorrow. Or in some future tomorrow when eternity begins. But when you realize this is already eternal, you understand what today means - today is part of forever. Today is one more mark on the eternal. Today is telling the story we think we're only waiting to get to. 

Kind of changes the way you think about today, doesn't it?

But it's not just that. Perhaps the most dangerous thinking we have in relation to eternity is thinking it begins with us at all. We take eternity as our personal promise, believing it began with our first breath. Believing that we have from our first moment on into forever. But that's not the case.

Eternity gives us everything not from our first moment, but from the first moment. All the way from In the beginning, there was you. Before time began, you were formed in the imagination of God. Before we ever had a concept of such a thing as forever, we had forever within us. From the outset of forever, you were set aside for this measure of time - the one you can mark in hours and days.

That's powerful. Everything that has ever been is woven into the fabric of you. From the very first breath of God, it's all come to bring you to this time, to this place. You were created...to pull from the book of Esther...for such a time as this, with everything that came before wrapped into all that is as you move toward all that will be.

There are so many implications of this; it would take forever to spell them all out for you. But perhaps this gives your heart something to think about, your mind something to ponder. Eternity is given us for such a time as this.

What does that say about your time?