But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 2 Peter 3:8
Try to imagine what life was like where you live a thousand years ago. Our part of the country would have been occupied by a scattering of Malecite villages, with heavy forests unbroken by any agriculture, and no towns or cities. A few Vikings had moved into L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, but they didn’t stay long. How incredibly different life was from now! So project your imagination ahead a thousand years into the future – if the Lord has not taken His people home – and see if you can assemble any ideas of what life would be like. Given the rapid rate of change in the past century, I guess a projection 1000 years hence is beyond most of us. But it’s not a problem with God.
Each of our lives is like a little chunk of history, with a few details and observations as we make our way from crib to coffin. Think of your life as a parade that you are standing on a sidewalk and observing as it passed by. Today is a lovely float that is directly in front of you, with its decorations and characters that you can see and hear. Yesterday is a float that you can still catch a few glimpses of and hear a few sounds from, but the floats that preceded that one are out of sight and barely remembered. Tomorrow is a float that you can hear approaching, but can’t tell exactly what it is all about. The floats that follow tomorrow are not yet in your vision or within your hearing. This parade presents you with a limited view, and you enjoy each day as it appears. God’s view of the parade is from a much different vantage point. Not confined to the sidewalk, God views the parade as a helicopter passenger might, able to see every float in the entire parade at one time. He can view not only every day of our lives, but every moment in all of time, past, present, and future.
Peter follows today’s text by reminding us that God is not slack concerning the promise of His coming. With His perfect perception of time and its events, God is able to care for us and give us the confidence to rely on Him and await His coming in His time.
We are confined to the ticking of clocks and the flipping of calendar pages. God is not. Let us immerse our souls in the knowledge of Him, that we may appreciate His control and guidance through territory that we have not yet seen. -Jim MacIntosh