Our Awesome God: Eternity Beyond Earth's Limits

Phil Wickham - What An Awesome God (Official Lyric Video)

The Vastness of Existence

Living on this planet Earth in the vastness of the universe presents an awesomeness about our existence and what makes us exist. Sometimes, I think we are hardly well acquainted with the lifeforms we share this Earth with. Limited by the natural elements of sound and light, our ability to perceive is lacking, even with instrumentation.

In my view, all the planets could be inhabited with lifeforms so radically different from us but fully adapted to the environments they are in, just as fish take to water as we take to land. However, that is another story.

Time in the Eternal Spectrum

We live in a spectrum of eternity; time as we measure it is an infinitesimal fraction of that expanse. In the infinite stretch of eternity from the past, through the present, into the future, everything exists and then does not. Yet we have the imagination of time travel in both directions that can surmise everything is happening at the same time, though our experience of it is limited to the present.

A star somewhere in the firmament is born as another dies, yet it could take billions of years for the light from those stars to reach us. What we then experience in the present is in the distant past of that star. It is a mystery, and there is likely more that transcends the limitations of light in speed and for sight, that could carry us into any time in the span of eternity.

Wheels Within Wheels

In the Scriptures, we read of wheels within wheels. Viewed in the context of time, each wheel has a hub and spokes to the rim and edge of the wheel. If eternity were a wheel, from the hub, you could have a view of any part of the eternal landscape that presents as a sphere of wheels engineered in awesome craftsmanship that defies explanation. Time becomes a place you choose to belong in or observe. [Bible Gateway: Ezekiel 1]

Another wonder is shared by Apostle Peter about the concept of time in the eternal scheme of things, when he says, "that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" [Bible Gateway: 2 Peter 3:8].

Eternal Life Beyond Earthly Limitations

The longest-lived man in the Bible lived for 969 years; Methuselah did not live the length of a Lord's Day. Then just consider the coming of Jesus Christ, who gives eternal life to those who accept Him as Lord and Saviour.

We are taken out of the limitations the Earth, light, and time impose on us as we decay in earthly living to a dimension that is sure to blow any earthly mind away. Our God is an awesome God.

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Thought Picnic: Weeping for ourselves and others

Time is short

Ephemeral is the thought that creeps into the mind, the wonder about our existence that exists in a timeframe measurable and quantifiable, sometimes short and then for some quite long, that we are caught at the end in a kind of celebration of life like an account closed at the end of many transactions.

For those who have a faith, the belief of an existence beyond this temporal realm. We find that we battle between mortal morbidity and a hopeful eternity. The thought that this phase of enlivenment is the preparation for a timeless future that boggles the mind.

We never knew

The receipt of access to this bliss of promise that begins from herein provides the assurance that whenever we depart, the limitations of the senses pass away for the unlimited expanse of spiritual incredulity that the imagination cannot begin to fathom.

Though we have heard from scripture the phrase “the weeping and gnashing of teeth”, which is considered in the frame of reference of punishment, it was surprising to me when an inference was made to this emotional activity being found in paradise.

The realisation that we never fully understood the promise of heaven on earth, that regret and sorrow will require even the encompassing loving godly miracle from the Father of comfort and succouring for us to enter the grace into which we were called before the beginning of the world.

In Christ alone

For one, for the little and the plenty, for each day that is both eventful and seems without event, for each breath that one takes in sustaining life is a sense of gratitude and thankfulness.

For whenever our storied experience on this terrain ends, we might have lived knowing that we might not be worthy of anything but are still counted worthy of everything that was sacrificed. Not of what we have done, but out of what was done for us.

Thought Picnic: Only statues stand immortal after men have long gone

I stand before great men

As I visit cities around the world I am attracted to statues, monuments of stone or marble built to the memory of men whose passage in time is recorded for a viewing.

Before you, on a plinth higher than man is the edifice to man and it is usually a man though rarely a woman, the name, the year of birth and the year of death, between the years is a hyphen and that represents the long story of a life so honoured.

Yet my sight plays with my mind for seeing statues at night almost excites my imagination into thinking they would come alive and converse with me.

Men long gone

Then one reflects that statues are very much the yearning for immortality, great men personified in stone as a symbol, a memorial and a story, having walked the earth, they are long gone, dead and buried.

In the square in front of the fantastic neo-gothic Manchester Town Hall are five statues, I know only two of the men, Prince Albert the consort of Queen Victoria had a grand statue set under a canopy held up by four columns, his honour came by reason of marriage and great it was. Albert Square it is.

A few plinths away stood a greater man, William Ewart Gladstone without much ceremony, four times called to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria, yet the greater honour of a grander memorial fell on him who married than on him who achieved.

But for the stones, there is no remembrance of the men except in history or in conversation where what they did or the lives they lived mattered.

We are transients

Man on whom power has fallen for stewardship yet fails to see this passage of time, a long period of passage that is an eternity and a future also which is an eternity, we men being markers on the chart that offers an opportunity to live, but never the gift of immortality.

In our folly, we grab money and grab power and act as if for us, time has stood still, as if the reckoning has stopped and history ended yesterday, but we are all transients, some for a moment, some for longer, like flowers we bloom, we wither, we die and blessed be the work of nature as we return to dust or ashes to be fondly remembered or completely forgotten.

If honour outlasts us, a statue rises in a likeness for a moment in time when we were most comely, and as I visit another city square, I sit again observing monuments to great men long dead. Lifeless statues with names, the year of birth and the year of death.

When I depart, my slow long walk or journey back home continues as I contemplate how well I shall be truly forgotten, not having made a dent in time.

The memorials in Albert Square, referenced from Wikipedia

• ·         The Albert Memorial by Thomas Worthington and Matthew Noble (1869)
• ·         Bishop James Fraser by Thomas Woolner (1887)
• ·         John Bright by Albert Bruce-Joy (1891)
• ·         Oliver Heywood by Albert Bruce-Joy, (1894)
• ·         William Ewart Gladstone by Mario Raggi (1901)

Editorial: The morning after the world ended

A rugged earth

And so the earth is reborn as morning broke very much like the first morning, you wonder what happened to the scientifically predicted end of the world that seems to have passed without event.

The earth itself has seen many destructions and renovations, the earth at the beginning in Genesis did pre-exist, but it was without form and void, the backstory told later on informs that it was the domain of Lucifer’s rule before he rebelled and in one instant all life was wiped off the earth for an indeterminate period of time.

The life-forms of that bygone age are what we see as fossils of dinosaurs and the measure of time is an eternity that stretches from millions into billions of years ago.

Flood for a new beginning

Creationism gives the context to a post-Adamite destruction of all life that breathes air with the floods of Noah who with his ark saved both his family and all species of breathing animals.

Another destruction is pending, the one that was to be preceded by a rapture, yesterday, a tribulation, a destruction and the creation of a new heaven and new earth.

What our dear scientist missed was the fact that he had no clue about that scheduling. The omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience of God can be explained in natural terms.

Hubs, wheels and spheres of time

The dimension of time in which God dwells is like the hub of a wheel that extends out to the circumference where we find ourselves in a sector of a greater and mightier purpose than we can fathom, but that is the concept of eternity, it has no beginning or end because it is at the centre of all things and we calibrate our three-dimensional sector of this in units of measurable time.

The analogy of the wheel is probably what we can fully understand because we can create movement when it is properly attached, the mind-blowing dimension to this is a wheel in the form of a perfect sphere, multidirectional and self-propelling – in that situation you cannot have a hub as you would for a wheel but astronomers would probably appreciate the contexts of gravity, centrifugal and centripetal forces and much more.

The folly of man

What our scientist tried to do was have a peek into a point on the surface of a hub of hubs of spheres of dimensions of time and pinpoint with accuracy an event that even Jesus Christ said neither He nor the angels knew apart from God the Father.

It is hard enough predicting the weather, the markets ebb and flow with forces that are almost indeterminate, we cannot predict our own demise or even with any certainty the course of our lives and yet somebody wants to predict the end of the world. Amuse me.

Once again, his dimensions were out of sorts, his measurements in earth-bound units of finite time and he expected to offer a perspective of eternal purpose – what folly – for that again, his credibility has been questioned and we should expect another excuse and the world will continue until that expected but unknown date.

Good morning, world.

Thought Picnic: I am my own stories

Stories we dare not recount

The world we live in is full of stories many that would never be told but we live through them learning, experiencing and wondering what we have to do today and what lays in store for the future.

The future is both near and far, near as in tomorrow and the things that seem foreseeable until that light of life is snuffed away and the far which is that destination of an eternal place – the burden of the religions we profess and the sometimes the regulator of the lives we now live.

I have been fortunate and blessed – some might say lucky – I should not take any of it for granted, my life has not been without event, some I cannot even dare to recount but all that informs the way I engage with people who question certain elements and situations about who I am – nobody ever has the full story and at certain points in time even I do not have my complete story to hand.

The love will not diminish

This morning that stark reality jumped out at me in Facebook, an innocuous comment expressing deep emotion with amazingly unintended consequences, that I just avoided the inclination to make the inappropriate call.

The scythe of the eventually inevitable has harvested yet another, this time, the most beloved of the some many one has – now, it is the fourth and that is four just too many; all younger, all with shock and none that I can comprehend.

In the midst of grief I find myself talking about the eternity we foresee and the conflicts of life that might preclude one from supposedly intended destinations, fighting for who one is in the midst of traditions of faith, accepted interpretations and general abominations that dare not speak their names.

Who I am

You find yourself saying, “If this situation is a thorn in my flesh, then it would be removed, if I have to endure in continuous battle against forces that I struggled with for so long, then I will not be vanquished - but give me another narrative - one that does not throw my individuality and personality to some non-descript template of Christian conformity.”

What I am talking about – yes, exactly, that is what I mean – I guess I am still searching for who I am in the context of everything I have ever been.

For those departed, I hope they are all in a better place – in the water and not in the mercury – for I have once been a gatekeeper to the portal of the afterlife.

One day, I should boldly say, “I am what I am, I am who I am and will not apologise for being that.” It is however, a work in progress. So far, I am my own stories.