Little Chats With God

“Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens.” Ps 119:89Ps 119:89
English: World English Bible - WEB
LAMED ⁸⁹ Yahweh, your word is settled in heaven forever.

Lord, eternal is one of those concepts that it’s really hard for people to get their heads around. Maybe it was easier in the days of our grandfathers, when things moved more slowly and manfactured goods were built to last. But today … life moves so quickly, and years slip by before we have even gotten used to writing the new date. Then there’s the wonderful concept of “built in obselescence” - so often it’s cheaper to throw something away and get a new one than to have it repaired.

All of that adds up to a sense of temporariness: nothing lasts, everything changes, nothing is dependable.

Yet there, overriding it all, is Your Word. It doesn’t change or fluctuate. It’s not goint to become obsolete tomorrow, next week or next year - or in a billion years time. It’s not “here today, gone tomorrow.” It is eternal, just like You.

As with so many things about You, Lord, that can be either comforting or confronting, depending on where the hearer stands with You.

For those who know You, it is a comfort to know that Your promises re not “like piecrusts, made to be broken.” It means we can stand on firm ground, sure and unshakable. We are not going to get close to the goal posts, only to find that You have moved them again (as is so often the case with the words of men.)

For those who don’t know You, though, I guess it’s rather confronting to think that You are not going to back down; that You are not going to change Your standards just because society does; and that you are not going to allow individuals to be the “exception to the ruld”.

Lord, help me to rest in the sureness and unchangeability of Your Word.

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This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.

There is one God, and one mediator between God and people, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:51 Timothy 2:5
English: World English Bible - WEB
5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

)in Whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form (Colossians 2:9Colossians 2:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9 For in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,

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)and Whom God the Father has exalted to the highest place, giving Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11Philippians 2:9-11
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9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name; ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

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)

Psalm 144:4Psalm 144:4
English: World English Bible - WEB
4 Man is like a breath. His days are like a shadow that passes away.

Lord, I don’t know whether it’s just that I’m getting older, but time seems to slip away so quickly these days. Days, weeks, months, years - they disappear before I even have time to look at them, till I find myself thinking, “Hey! Who stole the last six months?” (or, for that matter, the last six years?)

I read somewhere that time seems to go faster as you get older, because each year becomes a smaller fraction of the entire life you have lived thus far. So, when you were five, a year was 20% of your life - quite a big chunk, so it seemed awfully long. When you get to 50, a year is only 2% of your life thus far - a much smaller chunk, so it disappears much more quickly.

Seems like a reasonable theory, but it leaves me wondering: if time goes this quickly for me in my fifties, what must it have been like for Your people of old, who measured their lifespans in hundreds of years? After all, at 500 a year would be only .2% of your life experience. Whoosh! There it goes! Don’t blink, you’ll miss it!

The Psalmist sure knew what he was talking about when he said that our days are like a fleeting shadow.

Yet that’s only part of the story - the bit of the iceberg that we can see sticking out of the water. Life in this world is so short, but it is not all there is. You have created each of us for a life that will go on forever.

The question, of course, is what kind of life it will be. You have given us the choice of living that forever life with You or without You. Sadly, many people forget that if they choose to live forever without You, they are also choosing to live without all that You cause. Love, joy, peace, beauty, friendship, mercy, goodness, justice - all those things that are the result of Your Spirit working in human lives, will be absent for those who choose eternity without You.

My guess is, they won’t be far into eternity before they begin wishing that it was “a fleeting shadow.”

This blog is © copyright Lynn Fowler.