You probably have read the comic strips that come in the newspaper. On Sundays they are even in color.
Some of them have a little story that goes for several days, as the action develops:
– One day it shows Charlie Brown being called to the Principal’s office and everybody wondering what he did wrong
– The next day shows him proudly coming back with a badge for the school patrol
– After that he discuss with his friend if that would be enough to get the attention of the red haired girl…
Imagine if you would clip those out of the newspaper and put them on the floor side by side, forming the complete story in a 5 foot long strip.
As you stand there you can see the whole story, but for Charlie Brown the time is passing according to his timeline:
– As Charlie Brown is anxious and nervous when he is called to the office, you already know that it is actually a good thing that is coming up.
– For Charlie Brown, at a given point, some things are in the future and others in the past, but not for you, since you can look at any point of the story at any time.
– If he could look up, out of the paper, he would see your smiling face from any point of the strip.
– If you could talk to him, you could tell him not to worry as he walks to the principal’s office.
This gives us a rough and somewhat imperfect idea of how God does not live in our timeline.
He can see our present and our future because He is not tied to our sequence of events.
He is above all this.
I say it is imperfect because when we are looking down at the comic strip we also have our own timeline, where another clock is ticking, while for God that is not the case. He doesn’t live in a different timeline. He doesn’t have one.
Also, we can’t interact with the characters, and we were not the ones that created them.
But the illustration still serves to give us an idea about how different God may see a situation from His perspective.
– How many times are we anxious in our little boxes?
– How many times we think it is taking too long for God to answer our prayers?
– How many times we forget that we are living in a 5 foot strip that contains a little part of our story, while there are millions of miles of it when we will be in the presence of our creator?
– How many times we give too much importance to something that has no meaning in eternity?
Come on, that red haired girl is not even that pretty…
