Lately I have been thinking about time. Like others with chronic illness, I sometimes move slower and accomplish less than I want. Time doesn’t wait for me when I need rest. There may be things I want to do, things I see others doing, things that I know I could potentially do, and want to do, and yet my body slows me down.
A.W. Tozer writes insightfully about the human condition in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy:
“Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give. Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency we are forced to lay our instruments down. There is simply not time enough to think, to become, to perform what the constitution of our natures indicates we are capable of” (p. 46).
Sometimes living with autoimmunity feels like an exercise in humility. Time continues to race by, but illness slows me down. When overtaxed, my body’s recovery will not be rushed. It takes its time. It heals on its own schedule.
When we bump up against our own limits, how wonderful then to know there is a Savior who transcends time! He offers us what no one else can, namely, endless time (Rom. 6:23). He is not constrained by the same things we are. God never rushes or hurries. He never runs out of time.
Jesus entered into the constrains of our human experience in order to set us free from the power of sin and death (Rom. 8:2). Even as we wrestle with our own limitations, Christianity offers something that thwarts that inevitable hard-stop to all our plans, namely death. Yes, Paul exhorts us to be wise and make the best use of our limited time on earth (Ephes. 5:16), but it’s also true that we are invited to rest and hope in God’s offer of eternal life (Jn. 3:16). This means that when we run into our physical limitations, we can widen our perspective to eternity and trust God with the plans left undone.
Tozer writes, “How completely satisfying to turn from our limitations to a God who has none. Eternal years lie in His heart. For Him time does not pass, it remains; and those who are in Christ share with Him all the riches of limitless time and endless years” (p. 46).
God’s gift of eternal life means that we have time. Even though we squeeze our lives between deadlines and schedules, days and months and years, eternity is limitless.
If you are discouraged by your limitations, perhaps, like me, you’ll find hope in Jesus’ words: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live,” (John 11:25).
As Tozer says “In God there is life enough for all and time enough to enjoy it.”
