1/22/06, Ep-3-B
| “It’s
About Time” “The time has come, Jesus said. The Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.”
Time stood still for a moment and later humans tried to count time forward from Jesus’ birth: but we counted incorrectly and messed that up. Still, humanity tried to measure all time by the Incarnation. All other miracles have their roots in the Grand Miracle. Prof. Stephen Hawking, of Cambridge University, widely known as the most intelligent and informed person alive; albeit, he is in a wheel chair and has to type on a computer keyboard through a breath straw. Hawking, a theist, has re-written his former book, “A Brief History of Time,” with a new title, “A Briefer History of Time.” Lots of us who read the first book and confessed that even his effort to communicate to the educated in other fields, it was too hard to understand in places, many places. In the “briefer” edition, which is still difficult, we realize that Albert Einstein’s Principle of Relativity have pointed out that time can not be measured in the same manner across the galaxies. In those far away places, our mathematics and time keeping does not work the same. New processes are being worked up as we speak. And, we will never run out of new galaxies to unravel. Hawking seems to believe that there is some place for God in all of this mix and that the typical definition of God’s time, and timing, has always been non predictable by scientists. Somewhere out there God has His own quantum mechanics at work and is randomly creating new things. God can not be predicted, as the Bible has always taught. There is always a sense of uncertainty and randomness in the intervention of God. With God, “It’s All About Time” and it is by His personal timetable. “A thousand years are but as yesterday when it has passed.” I have recited this poem at many funerals: There
is no death! The stars go down There
is no death! The forest leaves And
ever near us though unseen, John McCreery’s popular poem sounds a bit like C. S. Lewis’ idea that we are now alive in the “Shadowlands,” but when we enter Heaven we will be finally in reality. Yes, we can take Heaven seriously in our faith and in our minds. It seems a bit closer now, with the help of Einstein and Hawking. But we believers have always believed in glory; because we are believers and that is one of the big things that we believe. A young man was rushed to an emergency room with an extensive injury. His nurse bent to his ear and asked, “Can I do anything for you?” He said, “Please sing Amazing Grace to me.” As she pushed the gurney down toward surgery she sang, “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I one was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” And the young man died with renewed hope in his soul as his life slipped away from these Shadowlands toward the true reality of Heaven. “It’s About Time!” that we trust God. a
sermon synopsis by C. Robert Allred, Th.D., Pastor |
he Bible is all
about God’s timing: “It’s
About Time”The creation of the earth and the unique
creation of intelligent beings into whom God breathed a living soul
was God’s master plan. We
were made in His image. But then came the great fall from fellowship
with God and the casting out of the first family from the blissful
Garden. Later, in God’s own time came Noah and the re-creation
of the earth and its people. Later came epic events among the Hebrews
according to God’s timing. God tried to redeem Israel
through pestilence, slavery in Egypt. However, in His time God enacted
The Grand Miracle of Incarnation.