Weight of the World

I have been reading a fantastic book called God's Story by Anne Graham Lotz.  It's a really good read for a new Christian, or someone who is interested in Christianity but wants to know more about God and developing a relationship with Him.

There's a section in the prologue where the author discusses the fact that God is not bound by 'time' - that which exists to us on Earth.  She has a very clear and direct way of describing this hard-to-fathom (at least for me) truth that makes it relatively easy to comprehend.  She manages to delve into the subject and break it down without getting lost or overcomplicated about it.  

One of the concepts she brings up is predestination.  I have discussed this with many of my Christian friends, and there seems to be a divide in the belief that God has already determined our life plan.  It's hard for some to believe in both predestination and free will.  However, Ms. Lotz has a profound application of God's existence outside the boundaries of time to predestination.  She states, "He sees all of your life from beginning to end at one time."  In essence, to us, we make a choice and then thirty years later, we might make another choice; to God, He sees those thirty years- in fact, our whole life- happening at one time, because time does not exist to Him.  Therefore, He can choose us, yet at the same time, we have free will to choose.

The most shocking concept she brings up, however, is a seemingly obvious "if...then" theory that somehow has never occurred to me.  I actually gasped aloud as I read it.  It's this:  If Jesus was God, and God is not bound by time, then isn't it possible that when Jesus was crucified, suffering the sins of the world, he literally suffered an eternity of God's wrath in order to save us?  Could it be that those six hours that he hung were actually an ETERNITY to Him?

Take a minute to wrap your mind around that.  For me, it's been a struggle to truly comprehend Jesus' death and just how much love He had for us in order to die so that we could live.  I mean, it was soooo long ago, and it's not like I ever met the Guy when He was here on Earth.  Therefore, I constantly ask Him to fill my heart with His Holy Spirit so that I may get a grasp of the depths of His love, a better understanding of Him.  However, when I read that Jesus may have hung for a timeless eternity on that cross, for some reason it was like a switch flipped on in my brain.  I was immediately flooded with this....awe, this immense gratitude for His sacrifice.  I realized that I will probably never even come close to understanding what a gift He has given us.

If you get a chance to read her book, I highly recommend it.