Seeing Through Little Keyholes

There is no blinding our eyes to the dark facts of human existence that seem to go against the faith that God is on the throne, that His goodness is at the heart of all things. But the problem still remains with man’s frail minds and limited vision. Even the words of Scriptural writers betray the fullness of God’s purpose. For all of our words are space and time contained and imposes limitations to human thought. Yet we must use words for they are the only means we possess in our grand attempt to express the magnitude of a divine plan that is far beyond our ability to fathom.

God’s purpose for the world embraces the ages but we are mere creatures of a moment. It seems a reasonable assumption that if God is from everlasting to everlasting, if He is eternal, if He brought the earth into being and is moving by patient process to some distant event clear only to His eternal mind, then His judgments will differ from ours. His ways are not our ways, and there are many elements in the long process of divine purpose not yet clear to our minds. It is not surprising that we should be baffled and puzzled by the ways of our eternal Father by a thousand questions not yet clear to us; the why of suffering, the purpose of pain, the alchemy of tears, questions which the wisest mind on earth cannot answer. How can we, born yesterday, dying tomorrow, with minds that cannot see a day ahead, understand the movements or meaning of a Mind that is eternal?

Our human minds, dependent as they are on schedules and clocks and calendars, confined within something we call “time,” cannot even imagine a Mind that is timeless and eternal. That is a dimension that is simply beyond the scope of humanity.

You and I can only see through keyholes and can only see the present, that which is happening now. We cannot see the past, we can only remember it and we cannot even remember it with perfect clarity. We cannot see the future at all. All we can grasp through our little keyhole view is the now; this moment, this experience. And unfortunately, some of us are strongly inclined to judge God’s eternal plan by what is happening to us in that ever-so fleeting moment of time called “now.”

But to God there is no past, present or future. His all-knowing is at one and the same time immediate and eternal. He knows things which man can only think about in time sequence but are known by Him as an “eternal now.” God grasps in ways which we cannot define or explain.

God knows all the free will behaviors of His creatures. He not only foreknows how certain events will lead to other events in the total scheme of reality, but He knows how the convoluted motives of billions of people will work themselves out in billions of personal acts. He is the timeless One and He sees the relation of this very moment to His total purpose. What a mighty God we serve!

We humans have difficulty in grasping this truth because we have a proclivity to make God in our own image and read our human nature into the Divine nature. We are proud and sinful; we experience mood changes or “good days and bad days.” We complain that we are “not ourselves” and it is hard for us not to keep falling back into the foolish notion that as we are, so God is: moody, capricious, changeable, sometimes loving, sometimes just, and sometimes vengeful.

But the crowning glory of God is His holiness and His wholeness. God never acts out of character. There is no variableness in Him as James reminds us. His omnipotence is part of His Person, controlled not by impulse but by His character, and because it is linked with His eternal righteousness, His power can be totally trusted.

For the power of God is inherent in His purpose. We come to understand this when we understand why Apostle Paul, living in a world where power was equated with brute force and military might, so gloried in the wisdom of the Cross of Christ. Paul saw with clear insight what our world is yet to learn, that love alone is creative and constructive and that by no other kind of power can God accomplish His purpose which is to save men, change their hearts and win their wills to Him.

No wonder the New Testament constantly admonishes us to endure the moment, to bear in patience this present trial, knowing that all the events of life are part of the great creative purpose of a loving Father who is determined to shape our souls into worthy stature. When Paul assured us that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,” he certainly did not mean that everything will automatically work out to our satisfaction. Rather, it is a clear call to lift our eyes up from our little keyhole view; to see our present moment against the backdrop of an eternal purpose and not to judge the huge plan of God by our present situation, positive or negative. It is not about us, but God’s eternal purpose for us.

If we stop to think about it, we know that even a few days can change our appraisal of events that happened to us. Some of us can attest to the fact that at some moment back then, when that hard experience which we tried to avoid and about which we ranted and complained, turned out in retrospect to be a blessing in disguise. So short and narrow is our vision that we do not know what to pray for or what to pray against. We do not know what a good day is for no event can be properly appraised on the day it occurs.

There was a bad day, thought so many at the time. It was a black day in Jerusalem when Christ Jesus was caught in the convergence of evil forces, betrayed, denied, mocked, beaten and crucified. Perhaps, if we had been there we would have prayed against the Cross. Earnestly we would have prayed that God not let it happen to such a good and innocent Man. Yet, in retrospect we see that in no other event in time was the love of God so clearly manifested and somewhere in the annals of history, bad Friday became Good Friday. We do indeed, see through little keyholes.

“Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21.

“But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” Psalm 33:11.

“…according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Ephesians 3:11