SCRIPTURE: That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. Ecclesiastes 3:15 ESV
THOUGHT: Still barely into the first breath of the new year, I am reminded that God has seen it all – all of 2024. That which is to be, already has been. That’ll throw your mind around a curve won’t it?
God stands outside of time, in eternity. He sees the world from beginning to end and what he sees there never surprises him, although it alternately grieves and delights him. He’s seen it all so often, our missteps and our dance steps. I don’t think that means he prescribes everything that will happen, but he knows every detail of the past and the present, and he intimately knows his own will for the future – which surely will be accomplished (Is. 55:11). So, he knows the future too.
Everything that seems new to us is old to him.
God knows what is in our hearts and minds (Jn. 2:25) (Ps. 139:4). He has already planned the day of our birth and death (Ps. 139:13, 16). He set us down in particular time and place (Acts 17:26-27) and put eternity in our hearts, but in such a way that we can’t figure out what he’s done from beginning to end (Ecc. 3:11).
All that, but he doesn’t require us to follow him. He longs for us to love him like he loves us, purely and passionately. He waits for us to bow a knee – and a heart – in absolute, stunned worship. He is ready to redeem every single turn we took that hurt his heart, his plan, ourselves and others. He is big enough to love when we don’t, to re-plan a million times the route home when we’ve taken one that made sense to our own minds, but not his (Pro. 14:12 and 16:25; Is. 55:8-9).
And what about that little phrase, God seeks what has been driven away. What an interesting statement. I’d honestly never noticed it before today, but it brings up a picture of the prodigal child in my mind, or a garden called Eden, or a thousand other stories from Scripture where something went missing and God went seeking. Stick with me here: if God knows everything about what we’re going to do next, nothing ever gets lost and he never has to go looking. He never has to stoop, to bend, to get his hands dirty with creation again. But that isn’t our God.
Our God is the one who has seen it all, and isn’t surprised when we fail. He will get his hands dirty because he just can’t leave the story of the earth he created alone. He’ll keep writing another chapter, and another, until he gets to the ending he has known all along would be brilliant, and we, all on our knees confessing he is God, will be in perfect agreement.
SONG: Someday Nicole Nordeman
PRAYER: Oh God, your ways are higher than mine; you’re thoughts are higher than mine. Thank you for being willing to stoop and bend and get your hands dirty with your creation, participating in the great reversal: making everything old new again.
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Blogger Amy Clemens is the author of Walking When You’d Rather Fly: Meditations on Faith After the Fall. In it she explores childhood sexual abuse and how it impacted her faith (or lack thereof) for four decades. You’ll find not only her story, but better yet, the Big Story of God.
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