I was outside one evening a few evenings ago on a clean night and the stars made me wonder about this new year of 2025: How old is the universe? All we know is that once upon a time or, rather, once before time, Christ called everything into being in a great breath of creativity — waters, land, green growing things, birds and beasts, and finally human creatures — the beginning, the genesis. But the Bible makes it quite clear that creation was done in God’s time — Kairos Time — God’s time, which is different from our Chronos Time — or chronological time. A thousand years for us is no more than the blink of an eye to God. But in God’s good time — Kairos — the universe came into being, opening up from a tiny flower of nothingness to great clouds of hydrogen gas to swirling galaxies. In God’s good time came solar systems and planets and ultimately this planet on which I stand on this autumn evening as the Earth makes its graceful dance around the sun. It takes one Earth day, one Earth night, to make a full turn, part of the intricate pattern of the universe. And God called it good, very good.
That night I saw a sky full of God’s children! Each galaxy, each star, each living creature, every particle and sub-atomic particle of creation, we are all children — or creations — of the Maker. From a sub-atomic particle with a life span of a few seconds, to a galaxy with a life span of billions of years, to us human creatures somewhere in the middle of all of this, children of God, made in God’s image. And some day God will call each of us home — in Kronos Time — into a Spirit World about which we know nothing. The unique and singular role that Jesus as Christ plays in creation cannot adequately be explained in any definition of Incarnation. God is further from the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. God is simply love, and God’s limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus, the Christ, fully human and fully divine. Christmas, for sure, but a new Year, at least not in heaven because there is no time in heaven but God’s time — Kronos!
Christ, a Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes, willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be. Christ appeared as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly Divine, to show us what it means to be made in God’s image. Jesus, as Paul reminds us, was the firstborn of many brethren: “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn within a large family (of many brethren)” Romans 8:29.
I stand in the driveway looking at a sky full of God’s children, knowing that I am one within a large family of God, and that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. A short time later I step back into the house.
It’s time to go to bed.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”
John 1:14.
"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law” Galatians 4:4.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” Colossians 1:15.
“And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” Matthew 25:46.
“And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” Luke 1:35.
“And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” Ecclesiastes 12:7.
“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” 2 Corinthians 5:1.
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