Time

 May 21, 2022

Time is a funny thing. We measure it by the spinning of the earth and its annual path around the sun. Step outside of our solar system, and what becomes of hours, days, months, and years? God stands outside of all that confines and ages us, and invites us into his world of timelessness through faith in Jesus Christ. We call it eternal life.

The other day, our son Nate told a story about the orderly who ushered him here and there when he was receiving treatments for his melanoma. He was a pleasant, talkative man, and Nate asked him about his interactions, to which he replied that he listens a lot, and admitted that things got a bit dicey around the time of the last election. He laughingly said, “I just quote Daniel 7:27, and that usually shuts them up.” I’ll let you look that one up for yourself. 

I got to thinking about Daniel. Time plays a central role in the book, being mentioned 26 times. Let me set the stage. Nebuchadnezzer was the most powerful man on earth; his armies had conquered little Israel along with the rest of the known world. His authority was unparalleled and unchallenged. Or so he hoped. He was actually nervous about his power, paranoid and worried about treason within the ranks. 

When he had his dream, he was so unnerved about it that he demanded his ministers and sorcerers tell him the substance of the dream. When they protested that no one could do such a thing and begged to be told the dream so they could interpret it, the king accused them of stalling for time—the first occasion of the word in the book that bears Daniel’s name.

As the story unfolds, the king erects a huge statue of himself and demands that everyone bow down and worship it as a sign of loyalty to himself. He is worried that his power may be slipping; perhaps he is starting to feel his age, the years slipping by. His mortality is in view. He is well to be worried. He believes he has conquered all the lands, but Daniel sees things differently: It wasn’t Nebuchadnezzar’s power; God delivered Israel into his hand. 

When God revealed Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Daniel, he praised the LORD with these words:

“Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, For wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise And knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, And light dwells with Him.” —Daniel 2:20-22 

“Times and seasons; [God] removes kings and raises up kings.” Nebuchadnezzar’s mortality was staring him in the face. Time was rolling on, and the king was powerless to stop it. His fears were not without foundation.

The times in which we live are as tenuous as that of Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. Back then, one man who had it all feared the march of time; the other man knew that God was still in control, even though everything familiar to him had been ripped away when the king’s armies swept through his nation.

We can “have it all,” like Nebuchadnezzar, and yet live in fear, or we can lose it all like Daniel, and live in confidence and faith. The difference is in our relationship to time. If our time in this world is all we have, the times in which we live will produce fear. If on the other hand, we live not for time, but for eternity, time holds no fear. Nebuchadnezzar faced his mortality trembling. Our son Nathan is facing his triumphantly, because he lives for eternity, not for time.