It felt like magic. No matter where I turned, it would simply calculate a fresh route. I couldn’t get lost. Wow, this felt exciting and liberating, especially for someone like me who has an absolutely hopeless sense of direction. It was my first drive out with a satnav. I had heard of them but never seen one in action. Journeys would never be the same. I could relax more, play more, not worry so much about getting disorientated and ending up in the wrong place.
I loved it. I still love it now. It’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made. No more heated arguments in the car, ‘This way, turn off here, no I meant back there…didn’t you see the sign??!’ Those were not relaxing times. So, why thinking about the satnav, why now? Well, I’ve had some fascinating chats with people, provoked by my recent blog on discerning God’s will in our lives. How can we know if we are where God wants us to be? What if we make a mistake?
I get the impression from the Bible that God has an eternal plan in mind, an eternal destination if you like. Nothing we can do can undermine his ultimate plan. We can’t change it, prevent it or subvert it. It’s as if God has given us free will, choices about what route to take, but whatever we choose becomes part of his plan. He uses it, incorporates it, recalculates the route, so to speak, to reach that same ultimate destination. In theology, it’s called pre-destination.
It reminds me of student days in philosophy lectures. I couldn’t get my head around it. If God knows everything, knows what free choices I will make, and God cannot know something that isn’t true, how can I not do what feels like a free choice and, therefore, what does it mean to call it free? It was mindbending. It assumed, however, that God exists in linear time. If God exists outside of time, he knows what is at all times. He knows it because we choose it.
It was hard to get my thinking straight around this notion of ‘outside of time’ because I couldn’t easily relate to it in my own experience. I can only experience life in-time, in linear sequence. Yesterday…today…tomorrow. The clock ticks, one second follows another. However, I can grasp the notion that I actually live in one moment at a time. I live in the now, not the what-was past or the what-will-be future. The Bible describes God as encountering us in the now.
The now is where I am as a result of my particular life circumstances, decisions I have taken and of God leading me. God is calling me to be and become as fully as I can be in the now moment: all he has created me to be, enables me to be, empowers me to do. He guides me mysteriously by his Spirit, by the Bible, through experience and through others towards his final destination. God is our ultimate 'satnav' guide. If I choose to listen, I may get there quicker.
I loved it. I still love it now. It’s one of the best investments I’ve ever made. No more heated arguments in the car, ‘This way, turn off here, no I meant back there…didn’t you see the sign??!’ Those were not relaxing times. So, why thinking about the satnav, why now? Well, I’ve had some fascinating chats with people, provoked by my recent blog on discerning God’s will in our lives. How can we know if we are where God wants us to be? What if we make a mistake?
I get the impression from the Bible that God has an eternal plan in mind, an eternal destination if you like. Nothing we can do can undermine his ultimate plan. We can’t change it, prevent it or subvert it. It’s as if God has given us free will, choices about what route to take, but whatever we choose becomes part of his plan. He uses it, incorporates it, recalculates the route, so to speak, to reach that same ultimate destination. In theology, it’s called pre-destination.
It reminds me of student days in philosophy lectures. I couldn’t get my head around it. If God knows everything, knows what free choices I will make, and God cannot know something that isn’t true, how can I not do what feels like a free choice and, therefore, what does it mean to call it free? It was mindbending. It assumed, however, that God exists in linear time. If God exists outside of time, he knows what is at all times. He knows it because we choose it.
It was hard to get my thinking straight around this notion of ‘outside of time’ because I couldn’t easily relate to it in my own experience. I can only experience life in-time, in linear sequence. Yesterday…today…tomorrow. The clock ticks, one second follows another. However, I can grasp the notion that I actually live in one moment at a time. I live in the now, not the what-was past or the what-will-be future. The Bible describes God as encountering us in the now.
The now is where I am as a result of my particular life circumstances, decisions I have taken and of God leading me. God is calling me to be and become as fully as I can be in the now moment: all he has created me to be, enables me to be, empowers me to do. He guides me mysteriously by his Spirit, by the Bible, through experience and through others towards his final destination. God is our ultimate 'satnav' guide. If I choose to listen, I may get there quicker.
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