When I have just woken up my brain works in funny ways. I was laying in bed listening to Maiden on the iPod and I began wondering about sacrifice and the nature of God’s for us. I am thinking of these things because I am working on a preaching series that is focused on stripping away the things that we have added to Christ, the Church and even ourselves. At any rate my thoughts were wandering and came to rest on the substitionary sacrifice (atonement) of Christ and his leaving us justified in the eyes of God. I began wondering what this looked like from the perspective of God. How does he see/comprehend these things? Does he even view His sacrifice as an action in the past (done once and for all) or is this language that works for us in our limited linear perspective?

 

It has been said before and by many that God exists outside of time…that time in some way is a device of God, no less a creation than the rocks in my yard. This being the case I have wondered if that means that God must in some way be constantly experiencing everything at once. His sacrifice, his death, his resurrection, his forgiveness, the beginning and the end…because there is no such thing as time for Him (seeing as He is without beginning and without end – one of which is required in order for time to exist).

 

Then I began wondering why we assume there is such a thing as time at all – even for us. I mean the obvious answer is that we perceive things in a linear fashion and so naturally we assume things are constructed linearly. It reveals a stubborn character attribute of humanity – we measure all things by our perceptions…and in reality our perceptions are quite fragile.  I mean eyes, eardrums, nerve endings etc…all of our receptors that tell us what is or is not…these are all about as fragile as things get – and we, we guage the nature of existance and the universe based upon these fragile devices. It does not seem wise. But back to time. We assume time exists because we have memory – a past…something that was and is no more. A time before. We exist in a present and because of the accumulation of the past in our lives we assume a future as well. In this we we have structured time and created devices to measure its passage.

 

Quite frankly most of what we assume exists (like time) only exists because our fragile senses suggest it and we, being egocentric, assume that what we perceive is reality and then develop whole systems of thought on this. Paul reminds us in the New Testament letter 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12 "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." Translation – all that we see is not complete; all that we experience is but a fraction of what really is and will be.

 

So why write all this down? Well – my brain started complaining about the paths I was leading it down so I consented to going out and getting it some coffee from Tim’s. On the way I turned on CBC Radio (my favorite station) and the science program Quirks and Quarks was on. Brilliantly the radio turned on catching a physicist in mid-sentance explaining how there really is no such thing as time at all and that such theories go beyond and deeper than quantum physics in their explanation.

 

The whole thing made me smile and wonder at the incalculable odds of this happening.