Did you use your microwave to warm your food today? We live in a microwave age where even waiting a few seconds for a YouTube video to buffer can seem like eons.
Do you remember when postal mail was the only option? As a child, I had a pen-pal in Seoul, Korea. Because of the geographic distance, our correspondence required several days of waiting patiently between letters. While I love the ease and convenience of email, I think living without “waiting” may make it difficult for us to grasp the concept of the eternal.
Pause a moment. Uh . . . I know pausing is hard when you are accustomed to rapidly clicking your way through cyberspace. But try to pause a moment and contemplate the word “eternal.” Eternal means existing outside all relations of time; without beginning or end; lasting forever; always existing, as opposed to temporal.
Before there was time, before the babe came in the manger, before the calling of Moses or the choosing of Abraham, before the creation of earth’s first molecule, before anything we can comprehend or conceive–God existed. The self-existent, non-created, self-sustaining God existed as the great “I AM” . . . before.
You may find the eternality of God a little unsettling because it is impossible to wrap your mind around the concept. But I find the incomprehensible mysteries of God comforting. If He was easily figured out, able to be contained by philosophical formulas or algebraic equations, He would cease to be transcendent God. As God, we should expect His attributes and activities to exceed our ordinary limits of thinking.
Although He is transcendent, He is also personal and He lets us in on some of His plans. One of my favorite Old Testament Messianic prophecies accurately foretells the city of Jesus’ birth:
But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Too little to be among the clans of Judah, From you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, From the days of eternity (Micah 5:2).
Today, when you push the “Start” button on your microwave and have a few seconds to “wait,” use the time to think about this amazing truth:
The eternal God established the eternal plan that the eternal Son of God would be born in a manger, in the rural village of Bethlehem, to accomplish His lasting work of redemption!
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