The Worth Of Knowing

“Would you rather go forward or back in time?” they asked with their mouths half full of PB&J. 

“Oh, go back in time for sure,” I said. 

“But why?”

“Because,” I paused wanting to be sensitive to both the truth and to their tender hearts, “There’s things I might want to do differently.”

But I’d have better luck wishing that toothpaste would go back into the tube.

Time flows like a stream – it find the easiest way forward. It seems to slow during the wide parts of life and we wade in it. But even then it inevitably moves forward.

We don’t know where it will take us or how we’ll get there, but we know at the end it pours into eternity. Like an ocean. 

We serve a God who is up on the beach, outside of time. 

A God who made time with it’s ebbs and flows and cyclical nature. He knows better than anyone how time works.

We serve a God who entered time and lived in time. He knows what it is to wait. To feel hurried. He knows how it feels to age. 

He knows what it’s like to submit to God’s sovereignty – to cry out in anguish to the Father like the prophets of the Old Testament yet to also have perfect reverence toward God.

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,”
‭‭Hebrews‬ ‭5‬:‭7‬-‭9‬ ‭ESV‬‬

He knows what it’s like to be in time where suffering often comes before glory.‬‬

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him …”
‭‭Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭8‬-‭9‬ ‭ESV‬‬

And he doesn’t ask us to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It’s always: move forward with what you know now.

There is mercy and grace found in moving forward with God in time. 

It’s allowing grief to happen with time.

It’s allowing change to happen with time.

It’s allowing sanctification to happen with time. 

This is how God himself designed it to be.

“… looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews‬ ‭12‬:‭2‬ ‭ESV