How God Bends Time

" [John the Baptist] saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ' Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is He of whom I said,' After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because He was born before me.' I myself did not know Him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason.' And John the Baptist testified, ' I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him. I myself did not know Him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ' He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.' " [ John 1: 29-34].

Here is the first- person narrative of John the Baptist.  Jesus, Himself , was baptized  with water by John the Baptist. Because of Jesus' baptism, we also are baptized with water AND the Holy Spirit.

John The Baptist says in his testimony that Jesus " was born before me".  But in fact, John the Baptist  was chronologically older than Jesus!

How could John the Baptist possibly say that Jesus  was born before him?

I remember when I was a young girl. I had Barbie and Ken dolls. Barbie and Ken were only dating, in my little imaginary stories with them,  but one day, they would get married. I was sure of it.

Like so many young girls, all over the world, over countless generations, I day- dreamed of the man I would one day marry.

By the time I was in high school, I had " built" this perfect man, in my own imagination. This man was to have a certain color hair. He would wear glasses, preferably tortoise -shell. He would wear tweed jackets. Maybe he would smoke a pipe? I even imagined a name for him.

For so many years during high school and college and graduate school, this man never showed up in my life. I began my first job, and I rented and furnished my first apartment. I began to wonder if  I would get married, after all.

Finally, through a mutual friend, I met someone. He had that certain hair color that I had imagined. He wore tortoise- shell rimmed glasses. The day I met him, he was even was wearing a tweed jacket.

Now THIS was getting a little spooky!

From the first few hours together, I found out that we had gone to high school in the same town. We knew people in common. We had frequented the same pizza place, the same park and the same bowling alley, practically all of our lives.

Even at that first meeting, I felt like I had always known him. I felt like we had been friends from childhood. And yet, we had just met. I did not know him. But I " knew" him.

Over time, I got to know him still better. Turns out, he smoked a pipe in those days. I could NOT believe it!

After we had dated awhile, I casually told him that I had imagined him just so, for so many years. All the details were correct. Except for one thing: I had expected his name to be Paul.

He replied, with an intense stare," Oh! That is my Confirmation name!"

The Bible is filled with examples of how God can predict the future and bring to pass His plans and prophecies for us.

God can even bend time. He can make the past the future. He can know you before you even exist.

Psalm  139: 13- 16 says, " For you created my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb.  .  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

It is said in the Gospel, that God can number all the hairs on your head.  [ Luke 12:7 and Matthew 10:20].

And so, the statement in Isaiah 49: 1 also makes perfect sense: " Before I was born, The Lord called me; from birth, He made mention of my name."

This statement in Hebrews 7: 3 , about Melchizedek, who gave bread and wine to Abraham and blessed him, makes perfect sense: " Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever."

The way in which we speak of God in the Doxology acknowledges God's power to span all time ---"As it was in  the beginning, was now, and ever shall be, [world without end], Amen."

And this is why I SO love God! His power is so very immense, that He can know us before we are even born. He can say that He knows that Jesus, His only Son, existed before John the Baptist -- even though John was born prior to Jesus.

Poet T.S. Eliot said, " We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. . . . What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."

[ Related Postings: " Anointed with the Spirit", January 13, 2014; " Baptized With the Holy Spirit", January 11, 2013; " Nativity of John the Baptist", June 23, 2012; " The Baptism of The Lord", January 7, 2011.].

(c) Spiritual Devotional 2014. All Rights Reserved.