But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
2 Peter 3:8 (NIV)
How God Counts Time
The belt starts at three in the morning. A man near the end of it says the street names as they pass, because he lost his place twice last week and both trays went out wrong. He’s the slowest one on the shift now and he knows it. Tonight a card comes through with a postmark from nine years ago, and he says that address like all the rest.
Peter is writing to people who are going to be asked a hard question. “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?” Their ancestors died and the world kept doing what it has always done, so where is he.
Then Peter asks them to keep hold of one thing about God and time. With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. With God both spans measure alike, and neither one crowds the other. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness,” Peter writes, and the reason he gives is patience.
The man at the belt has no idea which of the things he touches took four days and which took most of a decade, and he sorts them the same either way. The postmark says when a thing was mailed, and nothing on the envelope says what the time in between was for. God isn’t counting the delay the way the men asking that question were counting it, and he has said what he is waiting for: he wants everyone to come to repentance.
Before six a woman two stations up finishes her count, tells him she’ll take the crooked tray tomorrow, and walks out to the lot. He says the nine-year address once more to himself after the card is gone, the way he says everything twice now, and then he goes and washes up.
A Prayer to Remember
The life I keep praying about hasn’t moved an inch, Lord, and I can hear my own voice getting tired of the subject. You’re not counting this the way I do. Let me still be asking on the day something moves.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
