Omnipresence

7Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
⁸If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
¹⁰Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
¹¹If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
¹²Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You. Psalm 139: 7-12

As a child I distinctly remember being separated from my mother in a department store.  Surrounded by racks of clothing that obscured my view I raced through one aisle after another…hoping to find my mother again.  As tears filled my eyes I wondered how my mother had gotten so far out of sight.  Then I heard her call my name.  I couldn’t see her for the height of the racks…but she could see me.  I thought I was lost, but I was never for a moment out of her caring and protective gaze.  So, David relates the great comfort of knowing that whether we are in the deepest jungle, or in our own comfortable homes – the Lord knows right where we are…because He is right there with us.

Immutability

⁶ “For I am the LORD, I do not change;
Therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. Malachi 3:6

When theologians talk about God’s “immutability” His unchanging nature is in view.  Yet we see there are a handful of times in which God seems to adjust His plans based upon changes in the situation.  How can this be, if God is unchanging?  It is important to understand that the immutability of God applies to His character, but it does not limit his interactions with time.  Next, we must understand that while God is perfect and unchanging in his character humanity is always dynamic.  Thus, when a person changes they will also change in their relationship to His perfectly constant character.  Adam and Eve provide a perfect example.  God created the world for them to live and thrive.  They were in a right relationship with Him…until they rebelled against him.  At this point, everything had to change in order to accommodate their rebellion.  God’s character didn’t change…but how humanity would need to relate to Him in his perfection changed forever.  Just remember…if God ever seems far off or distant it is never Him that moved away.

The Constancy of God

²⁷ But You are the same,
And Your years will have no end. Psalm 102:27

Things change, relationships change, our bodies change, even the landscape changes.  It has well been pointed out that change is the one constant upon which we can rely.  Yet, we find that because God is not affected by time, He alone can remain unchanged by time.  The Lord never has “an off-day” nor does he get better at being God…God is perfectly constant in His character.  This means that God is always dependable and reliable in every aspect of Who He is.  We need never imagine that His standard of righteousness or justice differs from one day to the next, nor do we need to wonder if He will ever lose the edge on his omniscience and get caught by surprise.  Perhaps most importantly to us – when God declares and displays His love for us NOTHING will ever change that.

Everlasting to Everlasting

² Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. Psalm 90:2

Most of the mountain ranges, as we know them, came into being during the Great Flood of Noah’s day…but this verse looks back before that.  Before the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, and the surrounding universe.  From “everlasting to everlasting” is a curious phrase.  While our blip of time that exists between the creation and final destruction of this cosmos seems long to us, it is simply a space that exists between two expanses of absolute eternity.  As we gaze backwards and forwards into those two vast and incomprehensible preponderances of limitlessness we cannot begin to understand them.  We do not a vacuum…but our personal Father God…who always was and always will be Himself.  Like a child looking down from the high dive to see his daddy waiting in the pool assuring his safety, we can face the future because our Father God is God from everlasting to everlasting.

Eternity

Then Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there called on the name of the LORD, the Everlasting God. Genesis 21:33

When waiting in line time just crawls.  When riding a roller-coaster 5-minutes can feel like mere moments in passing.  While we have different experiences with time, we are always bound by it.  We cannot go forward or back, speed it up or slow it down, nor can we manipulate or change it.  We are stuck in time.  God, however, created time.  Genesis 1:1 gives us the moment where God created our timeline: “in the Beginning…”  It is strange to think that the beginning is only the beginning because God chose to start there…and had he not created space and matter, time would continue to be an abstract concept in the wake of his eternality.  In Genesis 21:33 God is called the Everlasting God.  “Everlasting” translates the Hebrew word: ‘olam.  This word means far more than simply lasting forever, but even has the sense of the fact that God is timeless…without beginning and without end.  There is nowhere you can go…and nowhen that you can go to escape from the love and care of your Everlasting God.