There is a show called Off the Left Eye that answers questions readers send in. The other day they spoke to how God both has omniscience about our choices and still protects our freedom. Two of the explanations stuck with me. 

 

"If I ask my granddaughter if she wants ice cream, she will say yes. She has the choice to say no, but I know her well enough to be certain she will say yes. I like to believe that God knows us well too and both gives us latitude in our options and still predicts what we will want."

 

"When you watch old movies of your family, you can see how people play out their decisions. You have seen it many times before so you know what will happen. Yet the people on the screen were in freedom when it did. God exists beyond the time constraints that limit us, and knows our future as fully as He does our pasts."

 

These resonate for me. While it is difficult for most of us to speak outside of time, there was a period when we were less entrenched in clocks and calendars. Babies know nothing of what day it is, or what hour. They don't need to. Someone else is taking care of all that. Ask a mother of a newborn who is wakeful at midnight. Gradually children conform to our system of chopping up life into measured pieces, which makes things easier as far as remembering birthdays and meeting up with play dates. 

 

Recently the stranglehold that has kept many of us in line has lessened. Some of us are forgetting what day of the week it is, and have stopped checking our clocks with the same urgency. Being late is less of a threat, when we are at home all day. 

 

There will come a stage in our progression again when we care nothing about dates or alarm clocks. We will be grateful to have Someone who knows us well take care of all that. I have often thought that the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey sounds remarkably like dessert.