“Before you created the hills or brought the world into being, you were eternally God and will be God forever.” [1]
Let us begin here with this statement: ‘God is timeless.’ God is now, was always, and will be forever. God does not exist in the realm of time; only we humans live in the realm of time, created for our convenience and by our hands.
I have raised these statements because I will, during this discourse, use the word time with some regularity. Like the rest, I regulate my life by time for convenience, but I do not live in time. Let me explain by using this saying, ‘Home is where the heart is,’ assumed to be dating back to the 1820s.
The way I would interpret this is: ‘home’ is a place of many emotions and has different meanings for each human. If you are still living in the home where you grew up, you remain part of the place you call home. If you’ve left this place you called home to start establishing your own home, then your existing home is where emotions are created by the moment each day. The emotions you experienced in the home where you were raised are now only memories.
Let me ask you this question: Where are you living as you read these words? Which time does your mind occupy at this moment? Yesterday, today, or tomorrow? Are yesterday or tomorrow shaping your life today? Let’s look at regret and worry as an example. You regret your actions yesterday – you worry about what will happen to you or your children tomorrow. Irrespective of your thoughts, you cannot change what you did yesterday. Neither can you change what will happen in the world around you tomorrow. What you can do with certainty is LIVE each moment of today to the full and leave yesterday and tomorrow to God. [2]
So, what about the end times? What can you and I do about the end times? Nothing! Why? Because irrespective of our activities, the end times will come, and they will go. Countless souls, over millennia, have tried to give people ‘signs of the end times.’ Some have even prophesied dates. All these words are fruitless – Why? You ask. Because Jesus warned us that these would come, He also warned that we should not waste our spiritual energy seeking signs of the end times. [3] Faith does not require signs, only acceptance of God’s word and steadfast belief. [4]
Lies and carefully crafted disinformation have been a hallmark of human behavior over millennia, but never before has the media disseminated such behavior to so many as it does in our age. If you are like me, you have given up believing a fraction of what you read in newspapers and magazines, hear on the radio, or see on TV and social media.
The recent attack on Israel by Hamas is a classic example. I do not engage in politics because I do not understand a tiny portion of what goes on in that realm. But someone referred me to a video relevant to this discourse. I would offer you a link [5] to a preacher who gave a commonsense message about Israel, those who are against her, and times of the end.
What remains supremely important to you and me is this: In the present global affray with all its fearsome threats, people being displaced, murdered, tortured, and the overarching threat of nuclear war, we would all be forgiven for being fearful. Many of us pray that this will all pass and that global peace and care for our planet will become the norm for our day.
My prayer is always: ‘God, thank you that your plan for our lives will never fail. I am grateful you made yourself known to me; I do not need to fear. I am thankful that you increase my faith and trust in you by the moment, even when I feel I’m failing. ‘Thank you, too, for revealing to me that I only have to focus on your love for me, and because of this – I love you unconditionally, and I love my fellow humans as you love me. – Amen.
God has shown me this is all I can DO and what God has empowered me to do.
Take courage, beloved, and know you are loved.
Peter James