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“Indeed, in your sight a thousand years are like a single day, like yesterday-already past- like an hour in the night.” Psalm 90:4 God’s Word to the Nations

It seems that the older I get the more flashbacks I experience. I had one of those occasions when I walked around the penny arcade in Manitou Springs, Colorado. It’s not that I hung out at a penny arcade as a child, but that the arcade possessed stuff from my past gathered into one space. Pinball machines, coin fed riding stuff and window shopping items like these reminded me of my distant past.

Like my distant past, these gum machines were distorted by the pane of dirty glass that protected them. This glass perverted my view of these machines. There were water spots and reflections that made it hard to see the details of these machines.

In the same way, my past is distorted as I move into the great unknown of the future. “Stuff” gets in the way of my memories so that I’m not sure what is real and what is now my perception of the past.

However, God sees clearly my past, our past. To God, our past is as if it were today. Maybe that thought frightens us. We’d like God to lose sight of our past, or that he’d at least see our past as better than it was (isn’t that how memories usually work?). Since, by definition, God stands outside of time “a thousand years are like a single day” to God.

If the psalmist speaks truth, and I believe he does, then we’re missing the point when we focus on our past failures and sins. If today is like a thousand years to God, or better yet, two thousand years, it’s as if Jesus died for us yesterday. Jesus’ mercy for us on his bloody cross is firmly fixed in the mind of God. God’s memory is fixed on his Son’s death and resurrection so much so that they are a present reality in our lives.

We might see through the glass dimly but God never does. His view of the cross is as clear today as it was two millennia ago.

Copyright, Douglas P Brauner

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