Posted on September 13, 2012 by Dr. Gary Sorrells

GodReflection: Garden to Garden

God’s time zone does not align with the one where I live. I have never understood “God Time.”

I do not have the same sense of time as God who describes His existence without beginning and without end. A writer of one of the Psalms compares a thousand years for God as a “watch in the night,” for man.

Let me detour to say I have no problem with the truth of time. Truth is truth and cannot contradict a God of truth. I don’t claim to understand all issues of God’s timing. I do believe God created dinosaurs and the old rocks on our planet and in our universe. I see no contradictions to any truth with the Biblical accounts. That said, I do not understand how to align my human sense of a twenty-four-hour day and a three-hundred sixty-five-day year with an eternal God who is not limited by a Timex.

I don’t understand why it took God who spoke creation into existence thousands of years to move his garden restoration project from Adam to Jesus Christ. Then another two thousand years later we still await the final fruition.

When Jesus returned to heaven, the witnesses left behind expected his immediate return. One hundred years later as the New Testament writings closed, some followers were beginning to feel discouraged because they were still waiting. Two more millennial is past and we yet wait.

We are now thousands upon thousands of years from the garden. What is God waiting for? Why is He so slow to act?

Has He forgotten to look at the clock?

At times, I want instant relief, but the second hand turns to minutes, then to days, then to years. I would think that a God who loves me would see my pain, stress, or concern, and immediately correct my discomfort.

For me life does not work that way. It is because a God who is beyond human comprehension does not work that way.

Why is restoration of the garden taking so long? Why has the final rollout of living with an eternal God in a perfect place of lasting peace, no pain, and without unfulfilled desires, still to be a future state?

My small mind can only guess at three answers. My first guess is, if the completed restoration had happened shortly after the fall, I would have missed eternal life with Jesus since I was not born until nineteen forty-seven. I am glad He waited.

My second guess, somewhat tied to the first, a God of perfect patience, who loves His creation of man and women more than I can comprehend, would surely want to give an optimal amount of time to save as many as possible.

My third guess is, due to the garden sin man now knows about good and evil. This being so every new birth lack God’s perfection of character.

Babies are born selfish. Every desire from dry diapers to a full stomach is self-centered. As infants we believe what’s mine is mine and what is yours should be mine. Is it possible God uses my life from birth to death to regain a portion of His likeness? Do I need this time to get to know Him?

We each need time to grow and time to make the eternal decision. Am I going to follow the good or the evil? Since the garden mess, I now know both roads and am free to select my path. God’s greatest desire is that I choose the good.

What is your reflection?

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary Sorrells

A GodReflection on God’s Time Zone