THE FULLNESS OF TIME

The opening verses of Genesis-the puzzling temporality of "days" that precede the sun and planets by whose movements we normally mark time's passage-as well as human history ordered by providence led him to see time as a subjective human experience, utterly subordinate to deeper and prior realities of God's counsel. More widely, the time of our life is enrolled in his flesh, his words, his touch, his movement across Palestine, his clothing, his mother, his family, his birth. The goal of our faithfulness is to see, as Moses sought after the face of God; as Elisha's servant was granted sight of the host of heaven (2 Kings 6:17); as the blind man perceived the Son of God (John 9:38). Or simply as the shepherds: "And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.