Friday, May 9, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Outside time
Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood
remains in me and I in him.
Just as the living Father sent me
and I have life because of the Father,
so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.
This is the bread that came down from heaven.
Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died,
whoever eats this bread will live forever.
In Sunday School Greg said, “If God exists outside of time, then can we pray for those who have died, understanding that for God their death doesn’t look like it does to us?”
Why not? Of course thoughtful class members had a few why nots, but I just loved the question. It gave me a chance to peer around the corner of today toward forever, far beyond what I think I know. Â Since any answer must approach the mystery that is God, I can rest in my cloud of unknowing, and rejoice just living in the question.
Then I found a thoughtful poem about eternity in my email the next day.
“I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.”
—John 10.28
This doesn’t mean you’ll go on
for a long time after you die.
(It’s life that’s eternal, not you.)
It means right now you are part
of a mystery that is infinitely deep,
given life that can’t be taken from you.
You are part of the Body of God’s love
which can’t be killed.
Love doesn’t die; it evaporates,
still present in another form.
Love is the Word that was in the beginning
and ever shall be, that creates all things.
When you love you are part
of the original “Let there be light,”
that lives on even after the darkness is gone.
Even in failure, love accomplishes its purpose.
This promise is not only for comfort,
but for courage.
Love, then. Let nothing stop you.
It will matter forever. – Steve Garnaas Holmes
Time took on a far more finite shape at our grandsons’ classical school presentation last night, called in Latin the Recitatio, after a literary practice of ancient Rome. Fourth graders created a “wax museum” of people from ancient and contemporary history, then memorized speeches about themselves. Standing beside a display of facts, they repeated the speech over and over. Whenever an onlooker pushed a button, each person began speaking again. Martin Luther, Alexander the Great, Jane Goodall and Florence Nightingale. Leonardo da Vinci, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rosa Parks, Thomas Jefferson and a dozen others had their moments in the sun.
Eighth graders recited “The Walrus and the Carpenter” and Marc Antony’s funeral oration at Caesar’ funeral (from Shakespeare’s play). What I enjoyed most was an 11th grader’s recitation of part of Billy Graham’s sermon titled “The Credibility Gap.” Billy Graham simply pointed out that one great thing about the Bible is that it “tells the truth.”
Often what we call biblical truth is offensive, unflattering to the “heroes” of the faith, and even contradicts itself from one book to another, even one chapter to another. But at last we are offered Jesus’ words, “I am the truth.” Truth doesn’t reside in heroes, and it cannot be adequately described in our words, spoken as they are by us, rather than God. Our best efforts at logic and understanding finally fall short.
With God all things are possible – even for God to manifest as human, and be the truth we have always needed to live into God and no longer away from him. This truth is a person, not an idea.
Saul fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I am Jesus. Now go up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.” For three days Saul was unable to see, and he neither ate nor drank. After some days Saul began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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