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Parallels

God can see out across all of time like waves on the horizon of Heaven. He sees you -- every version of you. He sees the selfish and selfless, wise and foolish. He sees your darkest shame and proudest joy. He sees you in the present and the past just as clearly as he sees you in the future.

In fact, he sees every possible version of your future -- all the alternate versions of what you might become with different choices and circumstances. He knows your greatest potential and the greatest threats to your destiny. God exists outside of time and has the amazing ability to see all these versions of you at once. The good and bad -- the past, present and future -- are all intertwined in his eyes.

We're accustomed to seeing ourselves as we are today. We assume God sees us the same way, but God's feelings for you are like the light from stars. When you appreciate the beauty of a starry night, it can feel as if that moment were arranged just for you. But the light from the most distant of those stars has been traveling for thousands of years just to meet your eyes as you glance up.

Meanwhile, the nearest stars only had to shine their beams for a few years to reach you at that same time. They're all part of an ancient symphony God choreographed to reach you at that exact moment. It may seem haphazard, but God tapped his baton to start the concert long before your great grandparents were conceived.

Imagine living for another hundred years, and you're lying on your back looking up at the sky watching the constellations take shape early in the evening. That future celestial concert has already been written, and it's speeding toward that future moment with you in the backyard of a home you don't even own yet on a cloudless night at that exact moment you will walk outside.

God's feelings for you are just as choreographed. Long before you gasped for your first breath of earth air, and before you ever read your first passages from the Bible, and long before you did anything to deserve approval or punishment from God -- he was writing the symphony of his love for you -- all of you.

That's why when God's angel spoke to a frightened impotent Gideon hiding in the winepress, he said "the Lord is with you, Mighty Warrior." It wasn't a pep talk. He wasn't trying to psych Gideon up so he would act boldly. God saw every version of Gideon, including the future warrior who would soon destroy the ungodly idols of his father and lead a bold charge with an underdog army to dispel the evil that had plagued Israel.

If you ever intend to have a deeper relationship with God than you do right now, you will have to learn to accept his unconditional love. Don't bring your guilty presumptions. Jesus saw all of your sins before he carried them on the cross, and he suffered in spite of it all because his love for you was established long ago.

Prayer

God, help me to understand the depth and complexity of your love. You know more about me than I can comprehend, and you still love me. Open my eyes so that I recognize the little moments you choreographed just for me.