It’s been two thousand years. Our Messiah told us he’d come back soon, and then he ascended to Heaven, and since then the church has been growing and spreading, multiplying and splintering, corrupting and reforming, resisting all the countless schemes of the devil, consistently proclaiming the same anticipatory faith, and waiting, waiting, waiting for Christ to come again—for two thousand years. Meanwhile humanity as a whole has been changing. We have greater knowledge and puffier egos than ever before, and people are starting to look at the long-winded waiting game of Christianity and call it ridiculous. Maybe we’re even starting to think the same.
Is our hope expired? What’s taking God so long? In answer, Peter gives us this wildly thought-provoking statement: with the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. In other words, God is not constrained by time like we are—in fact he invented time and holds it all simultaneously in his hand! With God, there is no late or early, no before or after, no impatience or stress, only the fullness of existence that he governs in complete, simultaneous eternity. This is me just trying to put it into words, but candidly, it’s an incredible reality that’s just too great for us time-bound creatures to possibly comprehend! But it also reminds us of a crucial way that God is wholly distinct from us. Time does not wear him down. He is not off-schedule. He is the same, perfect and unchanging, across the universe’s entire timeline.
And this is paramount to remind us who we are today as the church! We are the stewards of the same hope, with the same certainty, that has been around since Christ himself. Let no one tell you Christianity is outdated or just a collection of ancient rituals. Let no one tell you our species has developed past the old practices of faith and religion. God is the same God, and his church is the same church, and that has not diminished, because the Lord holds past, present, and future all together. The grand truth that everyone is seeking has belonged all along to the church, the very thing the world thinks it is growing beyond. So hold fast to your faith! Christ is coming soon as he promised—that has not changed. Until then, stay eager and watchful and hard at work. There are still more souls to be won!
