The state of our hurting world often troubles me. We’ve got crime, war, hunger. People who have been wounded turn and wound others. It can all get kind of depressing. How to keep from growing cynical?

It’s encouraging to remember the end of the story as given in the New Testament book of Revelation. The part where the Lord Jesus sweeps in to set up his heavenly kingdom for everyone who trusts him. In the process he permanently banishes all evil, suffering, and death. I used to tell myself, “Just wait… in the end God will win.”

“…will win.”

But I don’t put it that way any more. Recently it’s dawned on me that, while this bit of cheerleading was on the right track, it fell far short of the truth.

The weak link is that future tense. I had this vague idea that God would eventually, at some unknown time in the future, somehow finally manage to win.

Pffffffft. We’re not watching a hotly contested football game here, folks.

The truth is, the sovereign God who transcends time can see all of it right now. Just like I can see an entire page of a book at once. But let’s say I was two-dimensional, a letter printed in one of the words on that page. I could only see the part of the page immediately touching me. I would have no idea what word I was a part of, let alone what the next sentence said. Similarly, in our three-dimensional world we are limited within time–we can’t really see what’s next.

For God, in a sense there is no past, present or future. The future tense is irrelevant to him because he is already there. Not only can he see the whole story, he wrote it.

From my perspective, God will win.

But from his perspective, it would be more accurate to say “God wins.”

That present-tense has sort of been following me around for the last couple of weeks. When someone mentions a promise from God, I find myself not “wishing” or “hoping” He will fulfill his promise, but expecting him to. Somehow my faith has inched upward, resulting in a calm confidence that if God said it, it’s a done deal.

God wins.

As certain as if I had already seen it happen.

Thanks for reading,
Jan

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