We made our weekly trip to town to buy groceries at our usual shopping place. When we arrived at the check-out, the young man greeted us with a smile and said courteously, “It seems only five minutes ago that you were here last week.”
Only five minutes ago and in all truth it seemed the same to me. I could feel myself walking through the same check-out just five minutes ago last week. “Sorry I kept you waiting here for so long,” I answered with a broad smile in reply as we mused on how short time can seem.
The time lapse was as nothing and it felt so incredibly real to me just at that moment, it was barely even the five minutes we gave it.
Yet a whole week had gone by, seven days and seven nights, we had driven a hundred kilometres, we had been to church, we had cooked and cleaned and gardened, had made phone calls and written letters.
But between the check-out and the shopping trolley that morning, something in Scripture became potently real and personal to me. I felt and experienced the meaning of two things I had read many times; ‘For in your sight a thousand years are as the passing of one day,’ Psalm 90:4, and ‘In the Lord’s sight one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.’ (2nd Peter 3:8.)
Reality hit. Without altering anything, God can make time seem long or short, five minutes for a week or a thousand years between sunrise and breakfast.
It is some two thousand years ago that Christ was crucified but in God’s check-out time, that equates to about two days. Just two days ago, the Saviour lay in a sealed grave and today he is waiting at the check-out for us to come to him.
Please, will you fill your shopping trolley full of everything you own, and come to the check-out with me this morning?
Elizabeth Price