This is actually a little different as musical musings go: it’s a meditation on three different songs that all play together nicely on one idea: what can know about who God is, based specifically on this idea of Him being first and last, on this idea of his eternal nature. Why does it matter that God came first, that He will be last, that He is, by very nature, eternal?
Dictionary.com defines eternal as being “without beginning or ending, lasting forever, always existing” or “existing outside all relations of time, not subject to change” and “immutable.” This is a wild, radical concept for us to wrap our brains around, I know, and for us in the 21st century more so than any time before now. Life is actually defined by change, and our lives are so marked by it that to imagine anything that doesn’t change is incomprehensible. Even Albert Speer, the man chosen by Hitler to be the architect for his Third Reich, designing the buildings that would define his thousand year reign, was aware of the role of change in life. He looked at the way buildings ruined over time and took that into consideration as he designed, wanting to ensure that the buildings he built would look as good at the end of a millennium as the ruins of Rome did. Despise what the Reich stood for; the man had a sharp understanding that all things change… even things as permanent seeming as concrete and steel structures.
So, in a world where we’re hearing about the permanence of landfills (when in truth, the plastics and synthetics in them will break down eventually, just not within our lifespan), and watching technology evolve with a speed that makes bacterial generations envious, how do we conceive of an unchanging, eternal, immutable God? How do we wrap our brains around an idea that is completely foreign to us? Even the earth, the seemingly constant planet, is in a state of constant change, as the geological plates on which we’ve built our homes and our lives are constantly moving and shifting. Living in Oklahoma, that fact is easier to ignore… but in places like Hawaii or San Francisco or Japan or China, that’s harder to ignore. In those places, the plates are constantly moving, being consumed, grating against others. Volcanos and earthquakes speak to the instability and constant change of this planet we call home. Nothing on this ball is constant. Everything changes here. So how do we understand eternal?
Maybe, Beloved, it’s in light of this fact that we are told that “as high as the heavens are above the earth, my ways are above yours.” If you are a parent, or you’ve spent time around very small children, think back to the “why” stage. Everything was a question. Everything was an exploration. Everything was an adventure, and yet, not every question could be answered, not every exploration was safe, and not all adventures could be taken. Some of the questions asked were beyond the child’s ability to comprehend the answer. Maybe you created an answer that served at the moment, saving the answer that REALLY answered the question for when their little brains expanded far enough to wrap around the information they needed to wrap around the answer.
“Momma, why is the grass green?” You can try to explain chlorophyll and light refraction and photosynthesis to your child… or do you realize that the answer for why grass is green is bit beyond your child’s ability to grasp, and do you come up with something simpler that they can grasp right now that will lead them to the truth as they get there later? “It’s green because grass eats sunshine to grow. If you ate sunshine, you might be born green, too.” Or even “Because that’s the way grass grows!”
Sometimes, I think the answers we get from God are sort of like the answers we give our toddlers. We live on an ever-changing planet, and we ask about things we don’t understand because we have no frame of reference, and God, who has the frame of reference we need, tries to find the frame of reference that will lead us to the understanding we need to grasp the truth. Like the parent working with a small child who can’t understand yet what chlorophyll or photosynthesis or light refraction is, God is working out ways to lead us to those concepts with the knowledge we have available.
So our eternal God, unchanging in every way, knows that we lack the frame of reference needed to grasp what it really means to be eternal and unchanging. He paints us pictures instead, and tries to lead us to the truth, down paths that we can understand that will lead us towards the great truth of who He really is that is farther out that what we can grasp in our limited understanding. So lets explore some of what it might mean to be eternal and unchanging, and see what that might tell us about God.
Let’s start with eternal meaning that there’s no beginning. That means that God was uncreated. At some point, there is an uncreated Creator. That is God. The creator who was not created is the one I call God.
Being uncreated also means I didn’t make Him. He’s not some fiction I dreamed up… which means He’s not limited by what I can dream up. He’s not limited by human characteristics or failings. This is really a radical idea; look at the deities from other faith structures. Chinese myths include deities who feel shame. Greek gods are lusty and deceitful, jealous and petty. They squabble and bicker over who the prettiest is. They rape mortals. They look just like you and I, only with magical powers and unending life.
Other deities are stunningly approachable in that way… and yet, in considering the ultimate judge, the final standard by which all are judged, do you want the ruler to look just like you and your neighbor? It might be easy to measure up if our sexual mores are judged next to Bill Clinton’s, or if our morals are judged next to Pol Pot’s, but do you really want to be judged by the lowest common denominator? We say that our children will live up to the standards we set for them; where are you setting the bar for yourself if your mark for morals is Greek deities? I’ll never reach perfection, no… but I’m certainly never going to get anywhere close if that’s not my goal.
So God has no beginning, which means I didn’t create Him, which means He has none of my failings… which means He is perfect, unlike me. It means He alone is capable of setting the standard by which I am judged, the goal for which I must aim as I live my life, the goal towards which I must aim my children. Yes. I mean to aim my children towards living lives of perfection. I also know that they will fall short, just as I have done over and over. It is not the accomplishment of the goal I want from my children, just the honest aim for it. Aim, my Beloved, for the goal of perfection that God set for us, and if ever you manage to make it, you land in the lap of the Almighty. And each time you fail, God reaches out to catch you, cradling you close.
Alas, I’m chasing a rabbit… (look, there is goes! Was it wearing a waistcoat?! How remarkable!) and it’s too easy for me to get off topic that way. We were discussing what it means that God is eternal. I’ve said that God is eternal, which means He has no beginning, which means I didn’t make Him, and that He has none of my flaws. But eternal also means He has no end.
Now I know that it’s hard to imagine what it means to not have an end. Even coupons with no expiration date have an end; if the product no longer exists, if the company folds, then the coupon is no longer redeemable. As I said earlier, Albert Speer was working for an empire that fancied itself to have a thousand year life span… and even he saw that it would end someday (even if he thought it would be thousand years out)!
But God says there’s no end to His love. He says that this life has an end, that this earth has an end, that even time has an end… but not His love. Somewhere, there is an eternal clock ticking down to the end of days… but as the sand runs out on life on earth, His love does not. God does not end. His life does not. God, my Beloved reader, has no end. There is nothing you have done, nothing you can do, nothing you will do that will end God’s love for you. Nothing can come between God’s love for you and you. And nothing can End God. Nothing can bring God to an end, and bring His love to an end that way. You can rest secure in that. This earth will fade, humans will come and go, pets will die, parents and lovers will leave you eventually, but God will ALWAYS BE.
That’s why we can aim for perfection and miss. (Oh, look, I found the rabbit! It was going somewhere after all!) God is eternal. God’s love is eternal. God is perfect. God’s standard is perfection. But God’s love is eternal. So no matter how many times we fall short, God’s eternal love is there, ready, waiting, eager to pick us up and encourage us to try again. When we fall 148 times, God doesn’t say “Oh, great, here comes attempt 149. Let’s see if they can get it right yet. What a worthless lump this was. Eugh.” No!! Far from it. God says instead “Look at all they learned from the first 148 attempts! Look at how far they’ve come! You can do this, my love! Come on, Beloved, try again! Only 148 more tries, and you’ll have it! You can do this, my love! Come, my love, come out and don’t give up! You’re so close!”
That’s another of the things about God being eternal. He is timeless. He’s outside of the reach of time. He’s never surprised. You think you ever surprised God? Far from it. Nothing in your life ever caught Him unaware. He’s seen everything coming. He’s been there with you, and He either equipped you for it in advance, or He carried you through it. The worst disasters in your life weren’t surprises to God. The biggest tragedies in the world weren’t news to God.
For instance: My great-grandmother, my mother’s father’s mother, was born in 1911. My adoptive grandfather, on the other hand, was born in 1905. They were born on opposite ends of the same coast… one in Pennsylvania, the other in Florida. My grandfather was raised by his father, and in turn raised my father, who then married my adoptive mother, who eventually met me and took me into their home and raised me as their own child. My great-grandmother was raised by her parents, and then raised her children, who raised my mother, who gave birth to me, and in time, my mother made the choices that led to me moving in with my adoptive parents. But choices made by a man I never met 6 years before my great-grandmother was even born set into motion a tapestry of love that would create a family that would shape me into the woman I am today. One man, over 100 years ago, made decisions that would change the life of a young woman he would never meet, from an area he would have never imagined influencing, and I am here today because of the way he lived his life. God worked things in his life to shape mine… so that my adoption, as surprising as it was to me, at 17, was old, old news to Him.
I will freely admit that there are many things about God that I do not understand, that I cannot understand. Why did God allow the Holocaust? Why does God allow tsunamis to ravage coastal areas and take so many lives? Why does God allow suffering?
Why did God rescue me from suffering, and so many children are not? Why did God allow me to find His love, when so many are blind to Him? Why did God love me, when I did nothing to earn His love?
Why, Beloved, is the grass green? I don’t have the framework to answer all the questions. So I’m trusting that the answers will come someday, just as the understanding of chlorophyll and photosynthesis and light refraction did. I’m trusting that no matter what else comes, the God who loves me and promises to never stop loving me… that He loves you, too, and that we can trust in a God who is eternal in a world that isn’t.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I want to find good pop music. Help me please.
Asking for advise in pop music is pretty broad… what sort of things do you like? What sort of things would you like to to steer away from? What do you mean by “pop”? The term came from a shortening of the term “Popular”, as in “popular culture”, but has come to be defined as its own genre almost these days.
I apologise, but, in my opinion, you commit an error.
What error do you feel I’ve committed?