God’s arrow of time

So we come to the end of another year.

Next month is called January after the Roman god Janus. He had two faces and was able to look back and forward at the same time.

We all do that at New Year, we reflect on the past year and anticipate the coming one.

We are all conscious of the passing years.

With the flow of time we know we are getting older, if not wiser. Shakespeare caught that spirit. “To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time.

All our yesterdays have lighted fools the road to dusty death” (Macbeth).

Philosophers and scientists often call the passing of time, the arrow of time.

Our life is a movement from the known past to the undisclosed future. It is a movement we cannot control.

This sense of the inevitable passage of time is caught wonderfully by Edward Fitzgerald in‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’.

“The Moving Finger writes, and having writ, moves on: Nor all thy Piety nor Wit shall lure it back to cancel half a Line: Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” It all sounds pretty dismal. Welcome to old age, disappointment and inevitable decay.

But there is another way to think of the passing years.

Christmas has not disappeared into the past but is poised ready to lead us triumphantly into our coming New Year.

Because of Christmas we live in “God’s arrow of time”. God’s arrow of time is directed by the Incarnation, the Birth of Jesus Christ.

The philosophical and scientific arrow of time leads to decay and death.

But God’s arrow of time leads to life and renewal, to visions dreamed and promises fulfilled, to hopes cherished in the soul and realised in our lived-in experiences.

Christmas tells us of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

The incarnation tells us that God united human nature into his own divine nature, that our mortal life with its short life span is eternally joined to and supported by God’s eternal life and nature.

All because God reckons people like you and I to be valuable and important.

n God’s estimation people have a worth and a value that does not decay, die, nor pass away.

The Christmas within Christianity declares that Jesus Christ came from the eternity of God and after his life of salvation returned to the eternity of God.

We can share that homeward bound journey to God with Jesus.

Put your hand into His hand, walk in step with his step, give your heart and soul to the Lord.

Return this completed year to the Lord.

Then walk along God’s Golden Highway into your destined future.

That is the way the people of God in the New Testament looked to their future, and we will follow their lead.

Paul could shout out:“We do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away our inner nature is being renewed every day.

“For we look not to the things that are seen but to the things unseen.

“For the things seen are temporal but the things unseen are eternal”(2 Corinthians 4.16-19).

While the countless cloud of witnesses enumerated in the great letter to‘Hebrews’clearly demonstrate that they consider their life to be a pilgrimage, a journey in this life on earth, towards their abiding and lasting homeland with God.

Because these great people of the Bible show they know of a homeland in God, a city whose Maker and Founder is God (Hebrews 11.10).

So let us enter this New Year as into a fresh start in our homeward journey to God, a new stage in life’s venture.

Let us have the personal trust and confidence to know that whatever this coming year holds in store for us we will accept it from the heart of God and trust that in the eternal hands of God we will be guided, supported and kept safe.

May God bless and keep you in the coming days.

“Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith”(Hebrews 12. 1-2).