Wednesday, March 30, 2011

"His Times"


Thirty years ago today, President Ronald Reagan was wounded by a would-be assassin's bullet. As is often the case with such monumental events, I remember precisely where I was when I heard the news. In fact, the moment seems frozen in my mind, both in a mental and emotional sense. It seems as if it just happened.

Time is a strange thing, especially our perception of it. When we are young, the hands of the clock move as if mired in thick mud. As we grow older, they seem to race with lightning speed. I don't completely understand why this is, but it becomes truer with every quickly passing day.

"My times are in Thy hand" (Psalm 31:15).

The "from everlasting to everlasting" God of eternity involves Himself in time ("my times" according to David) for our benefit. Born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are the scene of a Lord personally involved in our seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. All are in His hand, to the degree that "my times" are actually His times. This involves an amazing act of condescension on God's part as He defers from the unlimited transcendence of His eternal existence to engage Himself in the boundaries of time. "The Lord our God, who dwelleth on high... humbleth Himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth" (Psalm 113:5-6).

Such loving condescension ultimately resulted in our Lord taking upon Himself the garb of humanity, and the living of life in space and time. "Great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh" (I Timothy 3:16). This is a great mystery, that an infinite and eternal Being could somehow enrobe Himself in such limitation. What spiritual, mental, emotional and physical pressure might exist in the Eternal dwelling in the confines of the temporal? We cannot fully know. Again, "great is the mystery." However, we can believe, and we can bow in grateful acknowledgement and adoration of so great a God, and so humble a God. Yes, the challenges of time we face pale in comparison to those experienced by the Lord Jesus as the humility of "beholding" in the Old Testament became the humility of becoming in the New...

"Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."
(Philippians 2:5)

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