"all are yours"

the world
or life
or death
or the present
or the future, all are yours;

and you are Christ's;
and Christ is God's. (1 Cor 3.22-23)


In this season of waiting, this year I find myself feeling a bit impatient. I think I'm impatient because I'm seeing hints of good things coming and now I want them here right away. Maybe that's the best kind of impatience. But it still makes waiting hard.

I mentioned to Heather the other day that God didn't have to struggle with impatience. Because God isn't bound by time, past and future are all present to God (Heather looked a bit skeptical about that). But if that's true then those words of Paul to the Corinthians take on a deeper meaning. The future is not an unknown to God, God is not waiting for it like we are. Impatiently, like we are. My feeling was that I'd rather have God's experience. But maybe that experience is not so far off, just as God is not so far off.

"You are Christ's and Christ is God's," Paul wrote. And in that union with God we live in the eternal present like God does, in the eternal life that Jesus gave us. The future may not be known to us, but it is also not unknown. It is known. It is assured and it is a present reality to the God who is present with us. In that presence we need not be impatiently waiting, but can be grateful for future gifts and promises certainly fulfilled. "The world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours."