Sunday, January 06, 2019
Sunday reflection: A day is a thousand years...
This morning I will be giving the sermon at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis. If you can, come by-- the service starts at 9:30.
The passage is from 2 Peter 3, and includes the idea that to God, one day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is like a single day. It's a confounding thought--like wearing a microscope on one eye, and a telescope on the other-- and scary in both directions.
After all, if one day is like 1,000 years to God, that means that he sees everything, like "bullet time" in the movies. His eye is indeed on the sparrow-- and on us. We are intimately known, and no secrets are hid. That's terrifying! Few of us really want to be truly known; we imagine that we can cabin away at least small, secret parts of ourselves.
And what of 1,000 years being like a single day?
That describes a God that spans the universe-- who is beyond our comprehension. And that means that we do not know more than a tiny fraction of what God does.
What does that unsettle? Certainty.
And from what I have seen, it is certainty--about who is favored and who is abhorrent to God, about which political party is right (according to God), and about who is going to Hell-- that has been at the root of the worst things done in God's very name.
The passage is from 2 Peter 3, and includes the idea that to God, one day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is like a single day. It's a confounding thought--like wearing a microscope on one eye, and a telescope on the other-- and scary in both directions.
After all, if one day is like 1,000 years to God, that means that he sees everything, like "bullet time" in the movies. His eye is indeed on the sparrow-- and on us. We are intimately known, and no secrets are hid. That's terrifying! Few of us really want to be truly known; we imagine that we can cabin away at least small, secret parts of ourselves.
And what of 1,000 years being like a single day?
That describes a God that spans the universe-- who is beyond our comprehension. And that means that we do not know more than a tiny fraction of what God does.
What does that unsettle? Certainty.
And from what I have seen, it is certainty--about who is favored and who is abhorrent to God, about which political party is right (according to God), and about who is going to Hell-- that has been at the root of the worst things done in God's very name.
