Can God time travel?
A devotion on Psalm 90 (part 2)
“Before the birth of the world, before the mountain ranges
Forever to forever you are always God.
In your eyes, a thousand years is like a day just gone.
So teach us to count our days.
Make our hearts wise.”- Psalm 90:2,4,12 as translated by Carrey Wallace in Psalms of Wonder: Poems from the Book of Psalms
The night before my daughter, Julia, passed away, I was reading Paper Girls, a comic book having to do with time travel. I couldn’t get that book out of my head after she died. Why can’t we just rewind time? Please, oh please let me rewind time!
I’ve wondered how time works in heaven. Is God outside of time? Is Julia on another timeline, like the Avengers? Am I on her timeline where she is?
Alas, those stories of time travel and separate timelines are not very Biblical. God has never promised to do away with our timeline or to rewind it. Rather, he’s chosen to insert himself right in the middle of our timeline and to transform it from the center. My professor explained it this way: “God is pulling the past, and pulling the future into this incarnation and redemption of bodies” (See Romans 8:22). God with us, will meet us in our present, our memories, and our dreams.
It seems a bit like salt-in-the-wound for the Psalmist to invite us to pray “teach us to count our days.” Those of us who have experienced trauma, on a personal or communal level, are already counting our days. I count every day with my daughter, Lucy, and wonder if she will make it longer than Julia’s 19 months. I don’t take any day for granted now.
But I’m not sure the message of the Psalmist is to stop taking life for granted or to make the most of our lives, as if the pressure is on us to get life just right. Rather, the message of the Psalmist is to remember our mortality and our insignificance, in contrast to the power of God who determines the length of days.
How does understanding this make us wise? Perhaps it is helpful to look at those who have forgotten their mortality, who have forgotten that they are “like grass.” They have certainly caused a lot of sorrow. But they too, are mortals. They will soon wither and be subjected to the wrath of God. Their thousand year reign will be gone in just a day.
Forever to forever, you are always God.
Questions for Reflection:
Invite Jesus to meet you right now, in this present moment. How might he want to speak to you about your past memories, and your future dreams as he ministers to you in the present?
How might you be discouraged by those who have forgotten their mortality and by the injustices that they have enacted? How does God’s eternal reign in comparison to human mortality give you hope for your community and for the world?