Time and Eternity

C. S. Lewis wrote: Divine reality is like a fugue.  All [God’s] acts are different but they all rhyme or echo to one another . . . . Fix your mind on any one story or any one doctrine and it becomes at once a magnet to which truth and glory come rushing from all levels of being.   Although I believe the statement to be excellent and enlightening for study relating to God and experience from Scripture, I would need some enlightenment how it fits for some of God’s acts.  I don’t have at hand Lewis’s, God in the Dock, to check his treatment, but Kimberlee Ireton quotes it in the outset of her review of Philip Pfatteicher’s, Journey into the Heart of God, which is touted as special in presenting the Christian Liturgical Year, for practical use in the personal lives of believers.  (She rightly faults the publishers, Oxford, for numerous copy errors, but counts the material worth the effort to overcome the distractions.  We sometimes forget that concepts and truths poorly wrapped may seem unimportant so may be lost.)  (Books & Culture July/August 2014, pg. 23)

My purpose in the Lewis quotation is to suggest that variant interpretations of meaning, reality, thought progression even life itself are so extensive in numbers and directions that we may become tangled in truth or fiction – especially related to spiritual issues.  It appears that Ireton, the reviewer, and Pfatteicher, the author, are seeking for simplicity so as to get at necessities of the Christian life and understanding to balance for thought and life as we ought to have it in the biblical context.  How better to do it than follow the important factors of Christian life and history to immortality than following a year of known experiences and weaving them into one another for holistic understanding?  To achieve the purpose would surely offer some persons greater confidence in faith that may not be otherwise gained for those who work with minimal treatment of faith and life order.  Such a system adds strength to the old adage that the best interpretation of Scripture is Scripture.  The Christian year seems to join time with eternity so to emerge with a flow of God’s ministry to mankind in a world managed in a time warp.  We yearn for simplicity.

Scripture teaches that God’s story related to earth and heaven requires a new heaven and earth is known in broad strokes.  The heaven created for other presence (angels) than God’s alone is also faced with judgment.  No other than God is in the Holy of Holies, but he is in control imposing his eternal integrity to the universe.  Heaven and earth are joined in the image of warfare that God wins.  All concludes in a great denouement and victory.  Patience is rewarded and that forevermore.  Even though the story can be woven, as Lewis offers elevation in form so to gain greater acceptance, we really are incapable, as human beings, to process it all into total satisfaction.  Patience in the matter will be partly rewarded in the understanding of the mystery ultimately.  That rests in patience which is a part of faith.  It is not an excuse, and will be justified in unraveling mystery to persons who graduate from faith into the light of reality when safety, hope, love, truth and God are incorporated into the holistic persons we were meant to be in the stampof the image of God.  It is too exotic for us – now.  Understanding claims need not be necessary to human redemptive faith.  The door opens to God for us in the humility of repentance of which we are incapable on our own – incapable of gaining salvation, but understanding what God relates to mankind to gain it. 

Loss is made up for in the forgiveness of God related to the acceptance of Jesus Christ in relation to life, death and immortality’s hope.  In this, eternity touches mortality offering immortality.  Sounds exotic, and it is in the capsule of mankind.  However, the capsule is broken, and from what is revealed a person takes safety in the faith trust found in Jesus Christ.  Christians trust Christ and he, by the Holy Spirit achieves his work.  In this faith becomes more vital than human knowledge, and becomes the ultimate wisdom that is effective in relating to: Our Father who art in heaven.  It is an immortal birth certificate written in the words of Scripture. So it is that redemption is both a believable and straightforward formula, and a difficult scenario for the full story of the mystery of God.  Scripture outlines our journey of faith through identity with Jesus Christ.  Given only human nature, we fail to live out God’s orientation.