October 6th

Job 35:1-37:24; Matthew 24:1-31; Proverbs 4:1-9

Today I was really struck by the timelessness of God. Elihu is talking about some pretty mundane stuff. They say that when we can’t think of anything else to talk about we talk about the weather and that is what Elihu is doing here. A bit of rain, a bit of snow and thunder and lightning too.

In this passage though, the weather is used to describe some characteristics of God rather than to pass a bit of time. It was when he got on to that part about the cows sensing the weather that I realised that all of this stuff could have been written yesterday, it is all stuff that we talk about today. The snow hasn’t changed, wind, rain, thunder and lightening haven’t changed. And God hasn’t changed.

It could be said that we are constrained by time in all that we do, some of us more than others. We watch the clock, we know what 5 minutes or an hour is, our lives are pretty much structured by time. But God is beyond time. He existed before time even began and that is rather hard for us to fathom, it blows our minds. Think of all the laws of physics and everything that we take for granted around us, and then think that God is beyond all of it.

In the Gospel reading Jesus takes us to the other extreme. Right from the very beginning of everything we know to the very end of it all, when Jesus comes again. This is one of the fundamental promises of our faith, the second coming. And amongst all of the wacky stuff that Jesus describes here, there is the fact that God will stay the same.

They reckon that all the events in Job were about 4,000 or so years ago and yet it talks about stuff that is exactly the same today. And I mean exactly the same. Snow flakes, lightening, rain, everything. Our God is so amazing he does not change. We can rely on him and trust him just as much as we could yesterday or the day before. Now that is an awesome God.