How Does God View Time??
4
Psalm 90
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
You often hear the phrase "a day is like a thousand years in your sight".
The idea is that God is outside space and time and so he sees everything from the aspect of eternity. He knows the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. If he didn't he would not be God. If God did not know something God would not be "all-knowing", and therefore not be God. As such God is sovereign over all things.
We live mired in space in time. In this psalm Moses is in the middle of the wildnerness wanderings after Israel was delivered by God miraculously through the Red Sea. But Moses cannot see where they are going or when they are going to get there. He is saying, "You delivered us from the Egyptians to rot out there!" It is in this humble place that he writes the psalm. Read the whole psalm to get a better feel for his lament.
Another commentator says it this way,
"He is raised above Time, and that none of the terms in which men describe duration have any meaning for Him. A thousand years, which to a man seem so long, are to Him dwindled to nothing, in comparison with the eternity of His being. As Peter has said, the converse must also be true, and ‘one day with the Lord is like a thousand years.’” (Maclaren)
Although we live one day at a time, as one of my pastors said, "We must keep one eye on eternity." This helps us not get mired in day to day difficulties and annoyances. We can live for things that will make a difference in all of eternity. Although God knows what that will be, we don't. Therefore, we can live our lives for the purpose of things that will outlast us.
Then every day with our Lord in heaven will be like a thousand years!
Psalm 90
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
You often hear the phrase "a day is like a thousand years in your sight".
The idea is that God is outside space and time and so he sees everything from the aspect of eternity. He knows the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. If he didn't he would not be God. If God did not know something God would not be "all-knowing", and therefore not be God. As such God is sovereign over all things.
We live mired in space in time. In this psalm Moses is in the middle of the wildnerness wanderings after Israel was delivered by God miraculously through the Red Sea. But Moses cannot see where they are going or when they are going to get there. He is saying, "You delivered us from the Egyptians to rot out there!" It is in this humble place that he writes the psalm. Read the whole psalm to get a better feel for his lament.
Another commentator says it this way,
"He is raised above Time, and that none of the terms in which men describe duration have any meaning for Him. A thousand years, which to a man seem so long, are to Him dwindled to nothing, in comparison with the eternity of His being. As Peter has said, the converse must also be true, and ‘one day with the Lord is like a thousand years.’” (Maclaren)
Although we live one day at a time, as one of my pastors said, "We must keep one eye on eternity." This helps us not get mired in day to day difficulties and annoyances. We can live for things that will make a difference in all of eternity. Although God knows what that will be, we don't. Therefore, we can live our lives for the purpose of things that will outlast us.
Then every day with our Lord in heaven will be like a thousand years!
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