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It's About Time


Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (I Corinthians 13:4-8a) 

            The last word on love is that perseveres. It keeps going. It endures. it never fails, falls down, collapses, bows down or dies. As I think about God’s love for me, my response is a contented mental sigh. As I think about my love for God, I’m embarrassed. 
            I’ve talked with atheists and agnostics who explain the problem without realizing it. We tend to want love to be easy, especially when it comes to God. We want Him to reveal Himself in ways that have meaning to us, when it’s convenient to us. We don’t want to struggle with our love. We think there’s something wrong when we struggle to love. God shouldn’t make demands. But God does. He refuses to manifest Himself in accordance with our wishes. When He does reveal Himself, it’s often in ways we’d prefer He didn’t. Instead of loaves and fishes, we are told to take up our crosses and to partake of His body and blood (at least figuratively.) Urges and desires that seem natural to us are declared to be wrong, but we’re told we should be doing things that just don’t come naturally. 
            I’ve said before that endurance and resistance are about building muscles. I think they’re also about building reality. If you’re working in the First Dimension you have a line. If in the second, you have a square. In the third, you get a cube. The problem is that none of those exist. They are just ideas. What makes them real is time.  Only that which endures (or does not change) through time is real.[1]


[1] Some may want to use this as an argument that God does not exist because He is not subject to time and does not change. This is precisely the wrong conclusion. God is not subject to time. He does not change. But He has revealed Himself repeatedly through history and revealed and manifested Himself within time. It is precisely that He does not change (even if His way of dealing with people does) that is the proof of His existence

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