I am who I am

A funny question among Christian's is "What did God do before he created the Universe?" I have often pondered that question and in my small thinking I think about God sitting in a big black space hanging out, looking like a disco ball in the center of a dark room shining small light around, but on an empty and black dance floor.

But today I had a revelation today reading St. Augustine's thoughts on what time is, he said Time is something humans created to understand how are lives move. I don't believe there was time before the universe, I believe that God doesn't see lives in a time frame, he sees it in stages. He sees his great painting by numbers picture start filling up before we get to 100 and we can see the two dogs playing with a tennis ball. God is bigger than time, he is bigger than what my brain can comprehend. God has been there before time and will be there after time. To God time is irrelevant, he has all the time in the world, and yet our time is extremely relevant to God. What we do each day matters, what we say, do, or even how we treat others matters to God. Time doesn't matter to God, yet our time here on Earth is precious, and it is a fleeting moment on the grand stage that God has created. Our time and what we do with it matters, how am I showing Jesus today? Am I helping or hurting the Way? How am I set apart? These are all questions that need to be wrestled each day, and beautifully most of the influential people of the Way have wrestled with these same thoughts.

In the first days of the Church Peter and Paul argued over the direction of the Way, whether it is to save only Jews or to also save gentiles. (Gal 2:11) Did gentiles need to follow Jewish law and be circumcised in order to be followers? Moses questioned God when he was told to speak to Pharaoh about freeing the Jewish Slaves (Ex 3:11). Jonah argues and abandons Gods path for his life and ends up in the belly of a great fish (Jnh 2), and then has the audacity to pout and be mad that God saves the people of Ninevah.

There are so many more examples, but the point is that sometimes we feel that we are the only ones dealing with the indescribable size of God and yet we have countless examples of men and women of the bible who have gone through the same thing, and come out the other side even stronger in there beliefs. As God states from a burning bush in the middle of a dessert, "I am who I am" (Ex 3:14). Perfect.

Guess what, I am who I am, and you will spend the rest of your human life trying to wrap your brain around those 5 words. Amen