Is, Was, And Is To Come

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was, and which is to come.” (Revelation 1:8)

       Would it not seem more sequential to you if it read, “… which was, and which is, and which is to come”? Evidently not…at least, not to God. In fact, you will see the same order in verse four. You see, with God, everything starts with an “is.” When Moses recorded, “In the beginning God,” he was not talking about God’s beginning, but ours. Jehovah God exists in the eternal Present, the perpetual “Now.” It is such an innate part of Him, that He refers to Himself as the “I AM” (Ex. 3:14).

       God only speaks in terms of time for our benefit. Our lives are divided into minutes—the sixtieth part of an hour; but God sees these as moments—what we would think of as a brief coming together of circumstances that usually provide some kind of opportunity.

       Reason would tell us, therefore, that we should reflect this same order (“is, was, is to come”) in our own lives. Our primary concern should be the “is,” with proper respect for the “was,” and recognition of the “is to come.” I read once that the past is a clock that can only tell us what time it was, and the future is a calendar that only God can fill in with a permanent marker. Ah, but the present, on the other hand, has the power to refocus the past and re-establish the future, humanly speaking. It’s the only tool we have; but it’s all we need.

       We may not be the Great “I Am,” but that doesn’t mean we can’t follow His example, as well as that of the great Apostle; who did not say, “I am what I was,” or even, “I am what I will be”; but rather, “I am what I am by the grace of God.”

“Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?” — C.S. Lewis