{"id":2370,"date":"2016-06-15T08:54:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T12:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=2370"},"modified":"2020-12-13T07:39:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-13T12:39:58","slug":"the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=2370","title":{"rendered":"The First Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"new<\/a><\/p>\n

Can you recall the first time you \u2026 ate pizza in a restaurant? Went to a professional baseball game? Laid eyes on the one who would become our spouse? Held your child? Went to the emergency room?<\/p>\n

Do you have a recollection of your first \u2026 day of School? Car? Date?<\/p>\n

Add up all the \u201cfirsts\u201d in your life; plot them along a timeline of your life. Where do you find the greatest concentration of \u201cfirsts\u201d? It\u2019s probably in the first portion of the timeline.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of lines from Scripture. Tell me on which end of the timeline of life do you think the author was when he wrote this.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, \u2018See, this is new?\u2019 It has been already in the ages before us.\u201d<\/em><\/span> (Ecclesiastes 1:9-10)<\/p>\n

If you guessed him to be an older man, I\u2019d say you are correct.<\/p>\n

When we are young our orientation to life is generally future oriented. We are facing forward. We imagine and anticipate great things.<\/p>\n

As we age our orientation to life becomes more and more oriented to the past. We are facing backward. Anticipation has been replaced by experiences and the memories that go with them. We no longer engage life according to the possibilities, but more and more interpret it through our experiences.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s my question: Does it have to be this way?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think so. Hold the aging Solomon\u2019s cynicism with life against the hopeful view of the future that gripped the aged Apostle John. To him God said, \u201cBehold, I am making all things new\u201d<\/em><\/span> (Revelation 21:3).<\/p>\n

Note, He does not say, \u201cI will make all things new.\u201d Nor does He say \u201cI will have made all things new.\u201d Nor yet, \u201cI made all things new.\u201d It is, to be technical about it, a present tense verb. That might simply mean that at the moment of speaking it God would be in the midst of making all things new. But there is also the legitimate possibility that this is descriptive of what God might ever and always say and do in the eternal future of what we call \u201cheaven.\u201d Forever\u2014for all eternity\u2014God will continuously be making all things new.<\/p>\n

Is not this what God is doing in this very moment in time (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:16-18)? So what\u2019s to say that heaven won\u2019t be made up of a continuous, ongoing renewal \u2026 so that everything, each time will be always be a \u201cfirst\u201d time?<\/p>\n

We concluded that most of the \u201cfirsts\u201d of life are front-loaded on our timelines. But maybe that isn\u2019t accurate. And maybe it isn\u2019t how we are supposed to live life. Answer this: How many times have you lived this specific minute on this specific day? Only once! You may be doing it in a place you\u2019ve been many times; surrounded by people you\u2019ve known all your life. But you\u2019ve never before lived this day in this place with these people in this specific set of circumstances. This is the first time you\u2019ve ever lived this day, this moment! You\u2019re in the midst of a \u201cfirst time\u201d!<\/p>\n

I leave you with three challenges that I hope will aid you in learning to live all of life\u2019s \u201cfirsts\u201d with imagination and anticipation. I think they bring the fabric of heaven down to earth:<\/p>\n