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- Written by: Don Goulding
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 time changes with motion.
With data streams beamed from the space probe Cassini near our heavy sun, physicists demonstrated that gravity also alters time. Seconds, minutes, and hours pass more slowly on a massive star than on earth, relative to motion and gravity.
God created the universe and the multitude of laws that govern. He is sovereign over the dimensions of time that I cannot begin to grasp. Time is merely one of the tools he uses to carve history into a monument to his glory.
On God’s timeline, we have lived in the era of redemption since Adam. The tiny span of each life must be redeemed through Christ—some retroactively through the years and others prospectively. Indeed, the goal of every minute of this era is eternal redemption.
Inside this era, God uses time to make us his partners in the work of redemption. The master of time let’s me join his cause for a few sacred years. And yet, it’s limited. Time will run out. The minutes of our lives will end, and the era of redemption will close. It’s vital that I use whatever time God gives me to insure redemption for myself and others.
Prayer: Master Creator, may I honor you through my allotted time.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
“Indeed, my plans are not like your plans,
and my deeds are not like your deeds,
for just as the sky is higher than the earth,
so my deeds are superior to your deeds
and my plans superior to your plans.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
“Go ahead son, let go. You can trust me,” Dad said.
My feet dangled from a walnut tree, just beyond his reach. I shook my head and clutched the branches. A skinny six-year-old would have been an easy catch, but I wouldn’t make the leap. Something in my juvenile reasoning concluded that if I couldn’t catch a falling person nobody else could either, not even my strong father.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may proclaim the virtues of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9)
“Sallie, you come away from that light. Come on, Baby-girl, we stay down here where Master can’t find us.”
Maroons, they were called, runaway slaves who hid in the swamps during the U.S. Civil War. Pattin and his wife were examples. They bore fifteen children inside a cave they dug from the earth. Imagine those kids living underground, in constant fear, not feeling sunshine on their skin until after the war when they were teenagers.
Like the Pattin children, we are born into a world system that’s as unnatural as a cave. We grow up slaves to the darkness of wealth, appearance, and acceptance. We are created to live in the sunshine of God’s love, but our earthen cravings keep us blind to the fulness of life.
When I was eleven, Jesus called me out of the cave. For a while I lived free above ground, delivered from the counterfeit life. But in my teen years, my cave-dulled senses couldn’t handle the radiance of unlimited love. I crawled back into the pit.
Now, I’m a part-time caveman. I dance in the sweet air of liberation, but then sneak back down the tunnel to slavery. The problem is I misunderstand my identity.
I am not a caveman, a mole hiding his fear and shame from the light of truth. I’ve been chosen for freedom, made into a royal prince, adopted into a holy nation of people belonging to God Almighty. At great expense to Jesus, I’m emancipated. That’s who I really am—not a cave-dweller. I don’t want to spend any more of my years in that half-existence.
Prayer: Savior, thank you for calling me out of darkness into your marvelous light.