Today we come to David’s least favourite letter from Uncle Screwtape, which is on the subject of possessiveness, particularly with regards to time. Joining him today is a returning guest to the show, Sister Natalia from the What God Is Not podcast, together with another nun from her convent, Sister Petra.
Today we’re talking about time. This might seen like an abstract topic, but it helps us understand important questions, such as:
1. If God is all-knowing, how can we really have free will?
2. How can God keep creation going while He was a baby asleep in a manger?
3. How can God be attending to millions of prayers at once?
So put on your thinking cap and let’s ponder the mystery of time…
Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
1. Some people struggle with the idea of prayer
(a) It relates to how God hears prayer
“A man put it to me by saying ‘I can believe in God all right, but what I cannot swallow is the idea of Him attending to several hundred million human beings who are all addressing Him at the same moment.'”
(b) Specifically, how God can hear prayers at the same time
“Most of us can imagine God attending to any number of applicants if only they came one by one and He had an endless time to do it in. So what is really at the back of this difficulty is the idea of God having to fit too many things into one moment of time”
2. Our trouble stems from how we experience life in time
“Our life comes to us moment by moment One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like”
(a) They assume that God experiences things in the same way
We tend to assume that the whole universe and God Himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. It was the Theologians who first started the idea that some things are not in Time at all: later the Philosophers took it over: and now some of the scientists are doing the same.
(b) However, God is not in Time
“His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty-and every other moment from the beginning of the world-is always the Present for Him”
“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”
