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Written by: Don Goulding

Published: 01 August 2022

… because we are not looking at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

Take a single atom and enlarge it to the size of a football stadium. The nucleus is in the center, and proportionately, it’s the size of a pearl. The electrons, far smaller than the nucleus, create a cloud shell at the perimeter of the stadium. The void between the pearl and the electrons is empty. Such is the amount of pressurized space in atoms, and atoms are the building blocks for our physical world.

The significance of this truth is that everything we encounter is made up almost entirely of space. Were we to remove the space from every atom in the earth, the compressed package would easily fit inside a football stadium.

I tend to conclude that the world I see, taste, touch, smell, and hear is solid. It’s not. Our existence is empty space, temporarily held in order by Christ. What is truly lasting is God’s kingdom. The values of that dominion shall govern our final destiny. Thus, love slices through human ambition, and peace is an iron wall to earth’s vaporous gains.

Praise God that I don’t have to live under the hopelessness that existence is over when Christ stops allocating the spaces. My temporary atomic body is occupied by my permanent eternal spirit. Therefore, the mission is to ready my spirit for the day my atoms will fall away. I’m given this time to replace whatever is corruptible with all that is Christlike.

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Written by: Don Goulding

Published: 25 July 2022

The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, the way a person speaks to a friend. (Exodus 33:11)

“Blezesh zhrooom, POW.” Our grandson woke me with his jabbering.

At two years old, it’s difficult to make yourself understood, yet I knew he was recounting a game we’d played the day before. I could only grin hugely and feign comprehension.

Most of us have a need to talk through the details of our lives. We chase self-worth by telling others what we said and did. If they’ll show interest, we reason, then our life must be worthwhile.

Behind the social media revolution is a craving to converse over the minutiae of our days. But dialoguing my life with another human doesn’t bring the significance I need. Trying to meet needs apart from God always results in meaninglessness.

Man was created to live in fellowship with God. We don’t know how long Adam and Eve enjoyed intimate walks in the garden with their Creator. It ended too soon. God missed that friendship, and even more importantly, he knew how worthless our lives became without him. So his own genius found a way to solve the interruption to the divine dialogue.

There were back-to-back doors between my room and God’s. For our rooms to be joined, I had to open the door on my side, and God had to open his. With a yearning for my Maker, I opened my door with plans to knock on his, though I assumed it would be locked against my sin. I was shocked to discover that Jesus had removed God’s door from its hinges. Only my door had held us apart.

Now both doorways stand open, and each exchange in prayer, every hour of sweet communion, is holy and eternally significant. No spouse, friend, or pet can satisfy my need for acceptance. God alone fulfills my need to integrate my life with something larger.

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Written by: Don Goulding

Published: 18 July 2022

From one man he [God] made every nation of the human race to inhabit the entire earth, determining their set times and the fixed limits of the places where they would live… (Acts 17:26)

Scientists wanted to know if Einstein’s theory of relativity was true, so they placed an atomic clock, accurate to a billionth of a second, on an airplane. They flew the clock around the globe, then compared its time to another atomic clock. The times were different—proof that motion changes time.

Measuring beams that traveled near our heavy sun from the space probe Cassini, physicists demonstrated that gravity also alters time. Minutes and hours pass more slowly on a massive star than on earth, relative to motion and gravity.

Because my life is confined to a singular timed existence, I have difficulty grasping the elasticity of time. God, on the other hand, transcends his creation. He stretches and shapes time, portions it out, or removes its limits altogether, as he chooses. He is the Master of time.

When God blessed me with his endowment of time, he chose where I live on history’s timeline, the number of my days, and the rate at which time advances for me. It’s a personalized gift not to be taken for granted. The grains will run out, and sooner than I imagine. Another fifty have slipped through the hourglass in the time it took to write this sentence. The unequivocal reckoning is near.

“What did you do with my gift of time?”

That’s the question God will ask, and my excuses will hide me about as well as transparent glass.

What did I do with the bit of time I held in my hands? Did I squander it on pleasures that melted into oblivion the moment they passed, or did I intentionally bring eternal honor to Jesus Christ? 

It’s better that I answer these questions now, while I still have time to change.