The Measure of Moments

We all are aware of its existence. We all feel the effects of its presence in our lives. Time. A brute force awakened at the dawn of creation. Its everlasting grip is equally effective on priests and non-believers. Time / Chronos offers no judgment, no ethics and disregards the skeptics. The path that it is obeys can never be altered by human sets of values or whims. Every human attempt to take over control is doomed to instant failure. If brings exultant highs and can also bring extinction, devastation or an end to entire nations. There are no restraints it crosses all borders and always marches forward. Relentless, unfeeling and unbroken.

It is the origin of all but God and assures demise for everyone. The scale of every human action is dwarfed by its influential presence. Like a river it is flowing, never stopping, ever growing. It breaks every dam and shreds all barriers while it flushes away remembrance because it destroys those that retain the memories. Every rule can be shifted over its course. There is no human way to predict it. All-embracing and an impact that’s never fading. Man is impotent in its monolithic face.

The Bible shows man is hapless and defenseless against it…but God is not.

Divine Control is exerted throughout all time. Time does not exist without time. Human history is inserted between two eternities. In the infinite solitudes of the past, before the birth of time, the mind has nothing on which to rest, nor can the eye pierce beyond the present order of things into the immense eternity future. Between these two there is a range of time, forming the stage upon which human history is erected. Here the mind has width and breadth to contemplate.

God made time for us by giving a chronological direction to His power. God has allowed himself to interact with humans in a timebound manner. We need to realize that before anything was even made including time, God dwelt in that eternity which knows no periods, no boundaries and no demarcation. No voice could be heard in that vast solitude but God’s. No presence but his.

Having created it, God rules over the whole course of time which He has made. God's control is observed by man in the events of time. Events take place at certain seasons, and a season is a portion or period cut from time in time. A quantified packet of time. The Flood, the giving of the Law and the establishment of Judaism, the founding of Christianity, the invention of Printing, the Reformation, the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution are some of the great births of eras, or epochs in time. These are the chronological joints that connect and strengthen the whole frame of human history. Humans are participants in them but they are by no means in control or them.

In the smooth course of events, human minds often fail to grab on to and pay attention to events. Conversely, great events startle men into surprise, and invite contemplation as I am doing now. Just as Solomon did in Ecclesiastes. Solomon is forcing us to take stock of it all. The mundane and the traumatic. The pointless and important.

Therefore, startling events in thoughtless world arouses skeptics and believers alike to behold the mighty hand of the great Controller of time. We take particular note of startling events by memorializing their dates. The time and the humans within it change but the divine control of it is marked by an unchangeable order in the elapsing of moments. Behind the chaos, the wars, the births and the deaths is the constant ticking of a clock as time unwinds towards eternity. This is what is meant in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Ecclesiastes 3:1 ~ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.

With God there is no disordered mixture of things-no wild confusion. The craziness of the last few years in American society has been a whirlwind. Many have vocalized their confusion and discomfort over the uncertainty of what is going on. Nothing is beyond God’s visible horizon. God cannot be taken by surprise, or plunged into a sudden perplexity. All the events of time arise from God’s fixed order or allowed by God’s omnipotence. They are determined by a plan ordained by God but usually misunderstood by humans.

It is a plan that can be traced in a line being drawn by a stern and steady hand with the precision and confidence of infinite skill. We call something this structured, ordered or this regular something akin to law. The laws of nature, the laws of science, the laws of time. That is because that is the way these things are seen from our point of view. On God's side it is the exercise of will; not a callous unintelligent force.

God had no need for time. In grace He gave it to mankind. God had no need of it. He has no mistakes to repair, nor can any reason arise to oblige Him to retouch and modify His plan. In Hie vast design no element, however small, is omitted or overlooked. He has power to carry all His purposes into effect; hence such a Being has no cause or reason for Him to depart from a fixed order.

The study of nature teaches us that there is a need of such an order in human events. There is such a fixed order in the physical world, in the great orbs that roll above us. The laws of nature are regular, severe, exact. We can depend upon them in their inflexible constancy. They are so consistent that you could set a clock by them. All things in the universe are ordered by number, weight, and measure. The purpose and the effects of time affect both man and lifeless matter alike. Erosion, degradation like a flowing river wearing down the riverbed.

Divine Revelation to man, is itself, timebound. Revelation itself implies the act or an instance of making known something previously unknown or concealed. None of this possible without the ceaselessness of the hands of time. In God’s perfect timing, He reveals things to us that he deems fit. What is the Gospel itself but the kingdom of God, implying authority, law, and order in the world now. The Gospel itself was revealed and unfold in time. The perfect time or Kairos.

Galatians 4:4 ~ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.

The teaching of the Bible is that man, as an inhabitant of this world, and as a candidate for immortality, is completely under the control of God in time due to the Gospel. You either accept it and are saved, or you refuse it and are condemned. All choices and actions anchored in time. God is patient that none should perish but the offer itself has a deadline or an endpoint. Salvation is eternal but the offer is not.

Mortality…it is a huge timepiece wound up by the Almighty and after He sets it in motion nothing can stop it until He says that time shall be no longer for that person. But here, now, it ever vibrates and ever advances-ticking one child of Adam into existence, and ticking another out. Now it gives the whirr of warning, and the world may look out for some great event; and presently it fulfils its warning, and rings in a noisy revolution. But there as its index travels on so resolute and tranquil, what tears and raptures attend its progress? It was only another wag of the sleepless pendulum: but it was fraught with destiny, and a fortune was made. A heart was broken. An empire fell. We cannot read the writing on the mystic cogs as they are coming slowly up; but each of them is coming on God's mission and carries in its graven and divine decree. Dr. J. Hamilton