God Eternal

One of the best ways to believe in the promises of God is to look back at the ones He's already kept. 

We say this as Christians, and we turn to our Bibles and we read about the way He gave Abraham a son late in life, He kept Noah safe in the boat, He protected Joseph in Egypt, He led Israel across the Red Sea and the Jordan River...and on and on and on we go, all the way through the life of Christ Himself. Promise. Kept. 

But I think that can be discouraging for some of us. Especially for those of us who live here and now. 

It's been 2,000 years since Jesus. Two. thousand. (And some change.) The rest of that stuff? That all happened hundreds to thousands of years before that. So I think it's easy for us to sometimes think of God's time frame as just too big. Sure, He did it once, but we don't have thousands of years to wait for Him to do it again. 

Then, we look at the bookends of the Bible, and that's not much more encouraging. In the beginning, God...and in the end, God... and we are supposed to be encouraged by that, we think, but friends, I'm broken now. I don't want to have to wait until the end of my life to be healed. I don't believe God calls us to live a broken life of misery so that one day, we can be restored; I believe God is restoring us now. 

(Wow, I am using a lot of italics in this post.) 

Isaiah tells us that God was here at the beginning and He'll be here at the end (41:4), but that doesn't keep me from struggling with now. With today. With this broken moment and this confident hope and this longing in my heart. 

So I think it's important that we keep track of the things God is doing in our life. However that works for you. Some folks like to keep a journal of answered prayer. Some folks just journal, forget the prayer. Some folks build altars or take snapshots or create mementos. Some of us like to post things on Facebook so that on this date sometime in the future, Facebook will pop up a reminder for us. Whatever it is for you. 

Because you need to know that God was here in the beginning and God will be here in the end, but you need to also know that God has been here all the way through. He didn't just start things, then go away and plan to show up again later. He's not just hanging out waiting for the next chapter in His story to be written. He's writing that chapter right now, and you're in it. 

And you need to see how He's doing it. You need to see how the pieces start taking shape. You need to see how it's all coming together. 

While it's all well and good for Abraham and Moses and David and Jesus and all those folks (and yes, their stories are important), I need to know that God is working in my story. Right now. The days I'm actually living. The chapter I'm actually writing. I need to know that God is not thousands of years removed, but that He's in the whisper and the wind and the stillness and the noise right now. I need to know not just where He's been or where He will be, but where He is, and that is right here with me and you. 

All the way through. 

Isaiah meant that, by the way, when he wrote those words. They're just too easy, sometimes, for us to misunderstand.