A & O

When I inserted the theme of Alpha and Omega into the list of devotion topics for Lent, my thought was to talk about the timelessness of God. How he has always existed and will always exist. However, it’s proving difficult to put the pen to paper, so-to-speak, and talk about this in a meaningful and understandable way. How can you talk about something that exists outside the time you can fathom as a human? How can you even begin to understand that God had no beginning, while you did, and how he’ll have no end, which as a believer you will spend with him? There’s a lot of questions! Pastor Kyle has preached on the timelessness of God during Christmas, how God inserted himself into our timeline when he sent his son to be born of a woman. He’s come into our timeline for our salvation.

If you are a watcher of Marvel movies, you might hear the word “timeline”, and endlessness of time, and think of the Loki series and the Time Variance Authority. The TVA in this sci-fi series oversees the task of making sure there aren’t too many variations in the sacred timeline, and that time runs its course smoothly. They discourage alternate timelines, alternate selves, and alternate outcomes. However, Loki (the god of mischief) has figured out the system and is able to visit himself from other universes and times and interfere with the work of the TVA. This type of possibility is enough to keep a person up at night, what if that could happen in my timeline! This isn’t the case with God. The beginning and end belong to Him. There are no deviations, or deviants for that matter, that would cause his plan to go off course. God’s plan from our beginning is salvation, and his plan for our end is eternal life. While we try to fathom a God that is timeless, we may as well try and understand all the timelines and universes in the Marvel-verse. As we often say in our Thursday morning Bible study for questions we can’t answer, we say, “I don’t know.” I don’t know how God could exist outside of time; I don’t know how he existed before the foundation of the world. All I know is that through faith in Christ Jesus, I will have eternal life with him.

Prayer:

Heavenly Father, as an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent God, you know all things and have the power over all. For us to understand your existence is impossible as imperfect humans. Give us faith in you and your plan for our lives. In Jesus’ name, Amen.