JIM COGGINS
God took time

It is obvious that we human beings should make time for God.

Perhaps what is more amazing is that God has taken time for us. He created human beings in the first place, and He has given us a remarkable universe to live in.

The things that He has created reveal to us a great deal about God. The universe of stars and planets, galaxies and planetary systems, plants and animals, processes and endless variations clearly demonstrate the tremendous power, knowledge and creativity of God.

But God has done more than that. Through the Bible, a remarkable book written over the course of 2000 years, God has gone to the trouble of revealing Himself to us. In the Bible’s pages, God shows us things about Himself and about us that we might not have learned through looking at the created universe or in any other way. God tells us that He is absolutely just and truthful. He also tells us that He is absolutely loving and kind. About ourselves, He tells us clearly that we are not always just and truthful. We have been cruel and unfaithful and dishonest. In short, to use an old-fashioned word, we are “sinners”. If we think honestly about our lives, we will realize that that is true. Despite all our excuses and rationalizations, we know that we have done things that we shouldn’t have done, and we know that we have failed to do things that we should have done, and we know that this has broken our relationship with God.

But God did not end His involvement with us there. He not only told us what He is like, and what we are like. He has also provided a solution to our problem. Almost 2000 years ago, the God of the universe sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live on this planet with us, to show us what God was really like. More than that, God allowed Jesus, His perfect Son, to be killed. In this way, Jesus paid the penalty that we deserved for our sin and our estrangement from God. In dying and then being raised back to life, Jesus provided a way for us to be forgiven and to be restored to a loving relationship with the God who created the universe.