TGIF!  It’s Friday morning as I write this and I am happy for the week-end to come. On Sunday, I leave with the Sheridan United Methodist Youth Group for Henderson Settlement in Kentucky on a mission trip. This is my first trip with this particular group but I have participated in numerous mission trips with varying goals over the years.  Often people will ask me how my vacation went when I return from a mission trip.  Many times I’m more fatigued when I come back to work than when I left.  This was especially true after two trips to Haiti.  Those medical missions were both physically and emotionally taxing. Yet they were amazing. So much can occur in one short week!

That’s the crazy thing about time.  It’s always the same 24 hr. day but depending on your perspective, it can seem faster or slower.  Every day on a mission trip is eventful. It seems to be somehow fuller than an ordinary day. Maybe we are living temporarily on God’s time, not human time.  When our clock is set on eternity, we don’t mark off time by night and day but by events.  Each day is endless and full to the max in a good kind of way.  We’re in a constant present tense.  There is no longing for the past or the future; no regret for what has been or fear of what is to come.  We are content to be in the forever “now.”  We rarely live this way on earth but we should.

Eternal perspective sees life as a continuum.  It doesn’t stop with day or night, with birth or death.  It stretches on but yet it’s not linear.  God sees all of time all at once.  This is why He knows what we will do in the future and what events will transpire.  In his book, “Mere Christianity,” CS Lewis discusses our confusion over God’s time. “The difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference is that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today’.  All the days are NOW for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them…He does not ‘foresee’ you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.”

I doubt humans will ever be able to see time this way, but just as we won’t be bound by sin and death in heaven, we won’t be bound by time.  We will have more than enough time to do everything we want to do and to become the person we were always meant to be.  We won’t have to worry about having to stop because the day is coming to an end because it won’t.  There will be no night. The brilliance of God will illuminate everything.  Even better, our relationships will go on forever.  We won’t be separated any longer from those we love by death or distance.  The time we were apart on earth will seem like just an overnight away compared to the time we will have to love and be loved by our family and friends in eternity.

We get a glimpse of eternity when we live in the now.  Our earthy lives by design are momentary and predictable. Night always follows day and death always follows birth.  But to live for those we serve today without thought for our own agenda, is really how we should live.  This is heaven on earth.  Time set aside from a busy, scheduled life to go on a mission trip is a holy activity.  It may be only a week, but in the scheme of things, it’s much bigger.  The time spent caring for others is measured in moments, not minutes.  If only for a week, we step out of earthy time into God’s time.  Someday we will live this way forever.

As much as possible, live each day wisely, fully and gratefully.  Grateful not just for what we’ve been given but grateful for what we are able to give. In this way, we establish the Kingdom of Heaven in the here and now, not just in the future.