Our Eternal GodChikamu

Having the right perspective on time is important, both in ease and in trial. In both seasons, it is important to see that time is right. We need to treasure the joys and endure the trials with patience. As adults, we look back on our childish perspective and wish we knew back then what we know now, but no amount of life experience will give us a fully mature perspective on time.

Ultimately, to think rightly about time and to have the right perspective on the seasons of life we actually need the perspective of eternity. If we do not understand eternity—which is an attribute of God Himself—we will become over-immersed in our finite joys and over-burdened by our time-bound trials.

Psalm 90 opens with a resounding affirmation that the God of Israel is the eternal God. The God whom His people have known for generations is the God who has always been, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” God’s eternal being stands before and above the creation itself, and for Moses (who wrote the psalm), it is the eternity of God that gives the proper perspective on the brevity of life and on the suffering it brings. Having remembered the eternity of God, Moses turns to the brevity of the life of humanity, “ The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble” (v. 10). Moses then prays for the right perspective on time. A perspective, he says, that brings wisdom: “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (v. 12).

Moses was one who understood that the perspective of God’s eternity makes sense of time and strengthens the people of God for trial and endurance. He had seen the people of God endure centuries of slavery in Egypt. He witnessed the long wait for their liberation as Pharaoh dragged his heels. And he experienced the decades of testing in the wilderness as they anticipated their entry into the promised land. Through all this, Moses’s confidence was grounded in the eternity of God. He sought actively to instill that confidence in the people of Israel: “ The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut. 33:27). They, however, failed to learn the lesson. And the story of the wilderness wanderings is that of a people who did not endure trials in faith, at least in part because they did not grasp the eternity of God. Their trials were temporary, but God’s people were in the hands of the God who always was and always will be—and so they could trust Him to carry them through and bring them to eternal dwellings.

The truth that Moses sought to teach the people is the consistent testimony of Scripture, “To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. 1:17); “I am the Alpha and the Omega . . . who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8). God is eternal, the Scriptures teach us. But what does that really mean?