Crossing time zones is about as close as it gets to time travel. Except it doesn’t work like in the sci-fi movies. Yes, you can manage to reposition yourself in relation to the sun, but everything under it (including yourself) continues changing.
A philosopher named Heraclitus said, “No one can step into the same river twice,” meaning the only constant is change. There’s actually nothing that reverses or even remains static. Everything is swept up in one grand motion–a stream that is irresistible.
Sometimes I find myself chasing the minute hand on the clock, because if you try to stand still, nothing else will stand still with you. That makes it hard for some of us to conceive of rest, even the concept of sabbatical rest.
I’m reminded of the verse in Revelation, “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’” (1:8).
His relationship to time is that He encompasses all of it as the Alpha and the Omega, the A-Z. He simultaneously stands in the present (“who is”), the past (“who was”) and the future (“who is to come”).
Only He is not subject to the onslaught of ages. Only He deserves the adjective “eternal.”
This gives more significance to the fact that He calls us into His rest in the Book of Hebrews. It is a perfect rest in Christ, not only for relief from the psychological tyranny of the urgent, but from the savaging of unkind change, from the relentless suffering of our own sins and shortcomings, and relief from the endless demands upon our finite energy reserves.
To rest in Him is to rest in perfection.
