It is a relentless quest, under no man's control. Every tick of the clock marks a step forward on the roadway that mankind knows as time. In the grand scheme of eternity, this human experience is but a piece of thread, floating in the vastness of everything that there is or ever was.

Eternity is the dwelling place of God, who by His very nature is omnipresent, omnipotent, and when asked by Moses for His name, responded… "I am that I am." As explained in a Wikipedia article, the ancient Hebrew translation uses Ehyeh, which is in the imperfective aspect, and can be understood as God saying that he is "in the process of being", a reference saying that he exists in all times, constantly, eternally.

The celebration we have just completed, Christmas, marks the birth of Jesus Christ, foretold in the Old Testament prophesies as coming in "the fullness of time." This roughly means that the child would be born when the time is right, or at the exact time when it should be.

Today we find ourselves marching on, having stepped over another line of demarcation that separates one year from the next. What we will find on this segment of the thread of humanity, I have to wonder. Every thread has a beginning and an ending, and so it is wise to contemplate, are we somewhere in the middle, or are we inching our way ever nearer to the end?

Unfortunately, this is a question that is impossible for us to answer, because we do not have the perspective of God, knowing and existing in all of time, constantly and eternally. That concept is foreign to us, and it is difficult to wrap our feeble minds around it. In fact, it is difficult for us to put words to it, much less, grasp the reality.

Jesus Christ embodies another of those difficult to grasp time frames, in completing his mission on Earth. His sacrifice on the Cross signified the defeat of sin, the new covenant with God, by which we are reconciled and made worthy to be in God's presence. Jesus spoke of the forgiveness of sin in the Aorist Tense, which again is not well represented by our language.

Used in this way, the forgiveness of sin is, "an effective, successful, single, one-time action." It loosely means that sins past, present, and future are forgiven, due to the work of Jesus, and it is not something that Jesus must do repetitively, for his work is complete once the believer accepts the gift.

From the perspective of humanity, and from the vantage of our finite sliver of existence that has been carved from the vastness of eternity, what is the point of being here? That sounds like those age-old questions that have been asked throughout history, who am I, and why am I here. I do not know, to tell you the truth, except as it relates to God's will. God wanted us, and so we are here.

So, if life on Earth boils down to a finite experiment, conducted by the Creator of the Universe, then what does it really matter what goes on here. Does it really matter what I do with this life? Does it matter what goes on around me, and should I care what others do?

The quick answer is, absolutely it matters. It especially matters, when you consider that God created us as eternal beings; not limited by the thread of time set apart for mankind's mortal existence. The Biblical record deals not only with man's fall from the presence of God, and the reconciliation foretold and ultimately provided by Jesus Christ, but also with how we are to conduct our mortal affairs.

Atheists will chatter all they want about the silliness of what I have written. Agnostics have better things to do, than worry if it is truth or fiction. False religions will pick bits of truth and co-mingle them with concoctions that serve the authors of those fables at the time. These false doctrines include secular purists, who are bound by a religious devotion to hedonistic pursuits, while adorning themselves with the trappings of goodness and charity. Continued...