I wonder. If I pray in the morning for the end of the Israel-Hamas war and for peace of mind and spirit for Daniel who is suffering alone in his room from a stroke, how can God receive and answer my prayers along with the billions of prayers and petitions said throughout the day by others around the world?
As C.S. Lewis states, “Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next moment comes along.” We live in the past, present and future.
Unlike us, God lives outside the realm of time and space. His is in the “eternal now.”
He’s also omniscient and omnipresent. So, if a million people are communing with Him at 7 a.m. in the morning, He can listen to every request at exactly 7 a.m. whether they are in Africa, Asia or the United States.
It’s like Mailchimp, the email program that allows up to 2,000 messages to be sent at the same time to people all over the world. Even though they are sent at the same time, the messages are received and read by each recipient at his or her leisure.
Applying this analogy to God, who is outside of time, it makes sense that He can “open” and receive our prayer requests — one by one — no matter where they are, at the same time.
Here is another way to look at this. Let’s say I’m writing a story. As the author, my story starts with a rock shattering a window and then landing on the living room carpet. The crowd shouts, “Come out and face us, you coward.” Mark, the main character in my story, picks up his gun and holds it behind his back with his left hand as he opens the door with his right.
The plot thickens and Mark is in the moment of my narrative. But I, the author, can get up for a soda and think about the next scene for several minutes before continuing to write.
I am outside the time element of the story, just as God is outside the moments of our prayer requests. Just as an author has time to attend to the actions of all his characters, God has infinite time to attend to each one of our concerns and prayers.
For God, it is still the first day of creation and the last day of the Israel-Hamas war; the day I was born and the day I die.
The Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. Chronos is the concept of time marching on. Kairos is the timeless moments in our lives — moments or special events that touch eternity: the birth of a baby, a daughter’s wedding or a prayer for someone’s healing.
Through prayer, our mind’s thoughts are invoked by the Spirit and enter eternity.
Eternity is the “eternal now” where God exists to tend to our prayers.
If we see time as a continuous line, then eternity is the page or plane upon which the line is drawn. God can see and process each dot on the line individually and uniquely. As the our time line is drawn or completed, He sees and attends to it all within His own time.
All time is simultaneously present in eternity, as are the events in a novel that are present in the mind of the author. In other words, all our petitions and prayers are present in the omniscient mind of God. They are present in eternity and exist forever.
From our perspective, God answers our prayers in a variety of ways. He can answer “yes” in a timely manner. Later, as He sees fit. Or “no,” which means out of time in a different way than we expect or imagine.
The beauty is not knowing His timeline. The beauty is that, no matter how our prayers are answered, it’s always for our good and the good of those we pray for.
So, when the Lord seems slow to answer your prayer, never give up. As the loving author of your story, He might be getting a soda.
This column may include both fiction and nonfiction, and views expressed do not necessarily represent those of The SUN. Submissions can be sent to editor@pagosasun.com.
