My husband has a carpenter’s chalk line. He rolls it out, squints down its straight line and lifts it slightly between thick fingers, then lets it snap. It leaves a distinct chalk line marking what he needs cut, not cut, lined up or whatever. The mark itself will eventually fade or be covered up, but the purpose for which the measurement was taken will remain in the integrity of his work.
“Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth, and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Ps. 90:2 (ESV)
Everlasting goes both ways. The everlasting-ness of God encompasses history behind and future beyond.
God’s line stretches beyond what I can see, into infinity and as much as humanity expands boundaries, infinity is always beyond my grasp to comprehend.
Our family’s timeline included difficulties, as does everyone’s. In our dark hospital days, when hundreds of people brought our daughter’s name before the throne, I wondered, why doesn’t God do something? While I felt I could not endure another minute of my daughter’s illness, God’s voice remained silent. I pleaded for now, not in five minutes or five hours or five years.
Like David in the Psalms I wondered, Why are you waiting so long?
I walked sterile marble veined hallways and asked for answers.
In an endless journey of day after day, month piled upon month, without change, God’s timeline within Scripture brought light onto the path I walked.
Time and again, woven throughout Scripture, God’s sovereign timetable is visible. From creation He called the light Day, and the darkness Night. “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” Gen. 1:5 (ESV)
He created time, moves it and holds it according to His purpose.
“Take your time God, take all the time you need,” is seldom part of my request. I tend to expect Him to do my bidding and do it quickly.
“For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” Ps. 90:4 (ESV)
The razor thin line marked for me is just a blimp in a continuum farther back and farther forward than any eye can see. Still God has eternal purpose for my little blimp. I do not have to know all of it, or get all its “why’s.” He works all of time together in ways that never compromise any part of His character. I can’t begin to understand the infinite vastness of it.
He isn’t confined to what I see.
- God chose the longer route (Ex. 13:17) for the Israelites so they would not change their minds and return to Egypt. Time is on His side.
- God reminded his children hundreds of years later of His miracles accomplished as if they had just happened, as if yesterday He parted the waters, as if yesterday He showed His glory to Moses.
- Joseph was in prison 2 years and those years are covered in our Bibles in one verse. They were agonizingly slow and real to Joseph. Yet, God had a plan for his generations to come.
- From the promise of the demise of the Edomites to it’s fulfillment with the death of the last Herod was 600 years.
Who knows the impact of our life, not just within my own needy piece of existence, but for the many others mine ripples, ten years from now, 50, or 100?
“Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth, and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Ps. 90:2 (ESV)
Who knows the impact of our life ten years from now, 50, or 100?
God’s timeline for Moses, Joseph, David, still has purpose. God’s purposes for your life don’t have expiration dates.
“So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Ps. 90:12 (ESV)
The chalk line my husband uses reminds me I am marked by God’s hand and for His purpose. Thanking Him for the past when the future hurts silences mockery that whispers, “Does He care? Does He hear?” Surely the magnitude of “from everlasting to everlasting you are God,” serves to define a purposeful distinction to those called His children.
For He who is Infinite, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, Creator and Sustainer has infinite plans for you.
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