When Time Burst Open
Written by Erin Richer
She was riding twenty yards ahead of me; we were heading toward a black diamond trailhead when I heard her shout something so absurd I asked her to repeat herself. Lately I’ve been out on the mountains almost every day riding my bike up and down the trails and this morning she was the only kiddo who wanted to join me. I’ve discovered my stomach has been starved for butterflies, missing adventure as I’ve been raising three kids. Mountain biking has filled a void and been such a gift to the whole family as we’ve partaken in such joy (as well as scrapes and bruises) together in this new hobby. Today it was my youngest who took me up on the invite to join me on a ride.
“What did you say?” I called after her to repeat herself.
She yelled louder, “I said, ‘Can we do something fun together when we get home?’”
“Do you mean as a family?” I asked, because obviously, she couldn’t mean just us. We had been doing something ridiculously fun, just the two of us, for the past hour.
“No, I mean just you and me.”
I’m not sure how to describe these moments and what they do to my insides, but it’s like a tearing. A piece of me shreds as I realize there is just not enough of me. When I give them some of me, it only makes them insatiably hungry for more. I suffer at the reality of my own inadequacy.
I think back to their younger years when I was spending every waking moment with them as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom and remember how insufficient I often felt because they couldn’t seem to get all of their emotional and physical touch desires met by me. I was around all of the time and I still wasn’t enough. It was around this time I began to tell my friends who were wrestling with going back to work after having babies about my experience. I wanted them to know if I can feel this way as a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, it must just be the way of the fallen world. There just isn’t enough time.
There’s a phrase that has come up a few times in our Bible readings that I’ve been pondering:
“When the fullness of time had come…”
Galatians 4:4 says: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
Mark 1:15, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near: Repent and believe the good news!”
In both places the word filled literally means “cram” or “to fill up,” like a container is filled up with copious amounts. I’ve wondered what it looks like for time to fill up? I picture a God that exists outside of time filling up time with love, expressing affection into the world, pouring it forth as His people long for more of Him, unable to get close enough, unable to taste Him fully, hearing of Him in the Word, knowing of Him in their minds but not experiencing Him in their hearts.
But then God filled up time.
And burst it open.
He erupted into the world—encapsulated Himself in flesh and blood, subjected Himself to time in order to live the perfect life for us, so that… He could obliterate the bounds of time and flesh and meet us Spirit to spirit, dwell in and among each of us forever and always.
Paul’s explanation of what the Holy Spirit means for us overwhelms me when I hold it up against the feelings of inadequacy I have as a mother to be everything to my children.
“…these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
(1 Corinthians 2:10-16)
Imagine our Father’s glad anticipation as He filled time up, preparing to provide a way to put His Spirit in ours so that we would have uncut access to all of our dad and all that belongs to Him at all times.
So when my daughter asks for more time, a limited commodity in this entrapped earthly shell, I long to be able to put my heart inside of hers. I long for her to know how much I love her and the depths of my affection for her. And so my mind wanders to the plan God had all along to satiate our incessant desire and need for His eternal presence and time. He rent the heavens and came down to be Emmanuel—God with us—now… and now… and now.
Hello again, Dive Collective! It has been so long since we’ve seen you, studied with you, sent you any news. So much has happened since we decided to take a break, and we will be telling you a lot about that in an upcoming podcast episode!