We live in the middle of a ticking clock. Every sunrise and sunset reminds us that time moves forward without pause — carrying us from childhood to old age, from beginnings to endings. We are creatures of a particular generation. A few decades’ difference between two people can lead to very different responses to the same event. Our thoughts, priorities, and fears are all shaped by the narrow window of years we occupy.
But not so with God.
When the Lord declares, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come” (Revelation 1:8), He speaks as One who stands outside the limits that bind us. God decrees times and seasons but is not ruled by them. He acts in history, yet He is not contained by it. His eternality means He is not merely everlasting — as though He were just very old — but timeless. He has no beginning, no end, and no succession of moments.
A.W. Tozer once wrote, “The mind looks backwards in time till the dim past vanishes, then turns and looks into the future till thought and imagination collapse from exhaustion; and God is at both points, unaffected by either.” For us, time is measured by “before” and “after.” For God, all things are an eternal “now.” He sees the beginning and the end in one view.
Psalm 90 — written by Moses — celebrates this truth. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” While our years “come to an end like a sigh,” God remains the same. For creatures constantly changing and aging, the eternity of God becomes our only safe home.
Moses draws two lessons from this. First, because God is eternal, He is the only reliable refuge for His time-bound children. Second, since our lives are short, we must live wisely. “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (v. 12). Wisdom begins by recognizing how brief our lives are compared to the everlasting God — and then entrusting each fleeting day to Him.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has made everything beautiful in its time,” but also that He has “put eternity into man’s heart.” We sense that there is more than this short life, yet we struggle to understand how God’s eternal purposes unfold in time. We want everything made beautiful now.
The problem isn’t that God is untrustworthy — it’s that our perspective is too small. We cannot see what He sees. His delays are not neglect but perfect wisdom.
Because God is eternal, we can trust Him with all of time — past, present, and future. And that truth changes how we live. We can leave the past in the past. We can let the future come as it will. And we can live today out of gratitude for all our eternal God has graciously given us.