Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
“I will make some time for you.” I heard those words from a busy man and was grateful. I knew how much he had on his plate, but I really needed to talk to him about a few things. This meant he pushed some things out of the way for me, adjusted his schedule. We had the conversation and he helped me.
Did you notice how this little reading from John’s Apocalypse begins and ends with an emphasis on time? John says that he brings grace and peace from “him who is and who was and who is to come.” In the last verse he records those very words in the mouth of God. He is both the beginning and the end, the source and the destination.
For God, time is not the ever-rolling stream that Isaac Watts speaks of in his famous hymn (LSB 733). He encompasses all time. He made it all. He is in every moment simultaneously. All moments are “now” for God. If God ever says to you, “Let me make some time for you,” He is not adjusting his calendar nor is He speaking metaphorically. He makes time for you. I think about that when I have some trivial thing to pray about. Many of my prayers I fear are about very small things, things which should be beneath God. But John also asserts for us that God loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood. That means He is not beneath listen to my silly prayers. He will make time for that. If every Christian alive today just happened to speak a prayer in this moment, God would make two billion moments just to hear those prayers, each one of them. He can do that. He is the one who was, who is, and who is to come. He is the Alpha and the Omega.