A Timely Reminder

I often need a tangible, practical reminder of the vastness of God’s power. This was the verse that brought it home yesterday:

Nevertheless, do not let this one fact escape you, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.
2 Peter 3:8 AMP

Time answers to God, and God does with time what He pleases. One of the consistent fears that I need to refute is that there simply isn’t enough time.  Not enough time for a loved one to be redeemed.  Not enough time for true healing of this or that trauma.  Not enough time for this scrambled-egg-of-a-life to be straightened out.  Just not enough time.

My post on Monday was born of a terrifying encounter with God, and I’m grateful for it.  Fear of the Lord is my safety and my sanity—and the key to God’s favor.

“These are the ones I look on with favor:
those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
and who tremble at My Word.”
Isaiah 66:2b NIV

Monday’s post was me trembling at His Word.  I saw, with greater clarity than ever before, what is meant by “the wrath of man shall praise You” (Ps. 76:10), and it put me on the floor. Not for nothing does the Holman Bible refer to God as “the Fear of Isaac” (Gen. 31:42 & 53 HCSB).  That’s one of the names of God—how astonishing!  So it’s perfectly natural to hit the floor when you glimpse God, especially as Jehovah-Makkeh.  But it doesn’t end there. The best part about trembling on the floor is getting picked up and held when He’s satisfied.

The paradox of my reality is that every experience of God as GOD ALMIGHTY sends me to the floor, and every experience of God as my Abba Father is the divine bear hug that picks me up off it.  When God scares me half to death, the answer to that fear is more God.  Ha! There I was, terrified by the inexorable move of God, and how we’ll serve His purpose regardless of what we choose.  And how does He pick me up?  He reminds me that the universe itself answers to His will.  He tells me that time means only what He wants it to mean.

I was once a carbon speck, screaming defiance at the Creator of All.  I don’t actually know how much time it took for God to bring me to the end of myself.  Maybe it was three decades, and maybe it was a millennium.  If one day can be a thousand years and vice versa, then how could I possibly know how long it took?  The last gasping breaths of a dying man may contain a lifetime in the hands of God.  We don’t know how many miraculous transactions take place, how many victories are snatched from the jaws of defeat.

The great mystery of our glorious God is that there is no contradiction between “the Fear of Isaac” and the Abba Father who “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”  Terrifying and tender, wrathful and merciful, Adonai and Immanuel – I need an eternity just to scratch the surface of the unimaginable wonder of who He is.

Praise the Lord God, the God of Israel,
who alone does such wonderful things.
Psalm 72:18 HCSB