While worshiping at the park one evening, I encountered an experience that I could not explain. I experienced a moment where I felt like time had stood still.
I went to the park that day to read, pray, and meditate. I started out by reading a couple chapters from my “Women of the Bible” book, and then after that, I turned on some meditation prayer music.
Before I started to pray, I decided to praise God first for speaking to me so clearly through what I read, and I thanked Him for helping me understand it. I also praised Him for His goodness and for always being there to listen to me and to lift me up. I thanked Him for the peace in my heart that I feel after spending time with Him, I thanked Him for being my provider, I thanked Him for carrying me through all of the hard times in my life and for giving me His strength to get through them. I thanked Him for loving me unconditionally, I told Him how amazing He is, and how beautiful His creations are, and as I went on and on from there, my eyes began to close, and the world around me began to slowly disappear. I don’t even remember hearing the meditation music playing anymore, or anything else for that matter, I just remember feeling this overwhelming sense of peace and euphoria that I cannot explain.
After a while, I “woke” up, for lack of a better word, because I know for sure that I wasn’t actually sleeping, and I was still in the same place, but everything around me had changed. There were different cars parked next to me that I never heard pull up, and a group of people standing just outside of my truck having a very loud conversation that I never heard until after I opened my eyes. The mediation music was still playing, but the song had changed, and I remember feeling a little bit confused because what felt like just a few minutes to me, was actually over an hours’ time!
Well, needless to say, I spent lots of time trying to figure what actually happened that day, and then one day while I was in prayer, God gave me these 4 words, “When Time Stands Still”. When I heard these words, I assumed that He wanted me to write about my experience, and that this would be the title of my devotion, but for some reason, every time I tried to write about it, I couldn’t find the words.
So, instead, I decided to do some research on Google to see if this had happened to anybody else, and what they thought about it, and that is how I came across an article written by Father Ron Rolheiser, titled, “When Time Stands Still”. At that point, I knew immediately that God did not give me those 4 words so that I could write about my experience, but instead so that I would recognize this article when I saw it and then learn from it exactly what He wanted me to know! It was so exciting!
In this article, Father Ron suggests that time actually CAN stand still, and he quotes a German scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink, who says that we can and sometimes do have an experience of time as it will be experienced in eternity. Lohfink says that we experience this whenever we are in adoration, which is the highest form of prayer, where we ask nothing of God, but instead just adore Him.
He then goes on to say that lament, petition, and thanksgiving are also good forms of prayer, but in them, we are still focused in some manner on ourselves, our needs, and our joys. However, in adoration, we look to God’s beauty, His goodness, His truth, and His oneness so strongly that everything else just drops away. We stand in pure wonder, pure admiration, ecstatic awe, entirely stripped of our own heartaches, headaches, and idiosyncratic focus. God’s person, beauty, goodness, and truth overwhelm us so as to take our minds off of ourselves and leave us standing outside of ourselves, being free of our own selves, which is the very definition of ecstasy.
Thus, to be in adoration is to be in ecstasy – though, admittedly, that’s generally not how we imagine ecstasy today. For us, ecstasy is commonly imagined as an earthshaking standing inside of ourselves, idiosyncrasy in its peak expression. But true ecstasy is the opposite. It is adoration.
Moreover, for Lohfink, not only is adoration the only true form of ecstasy, but it is also a way of being in heaven right now, and of experiencing time as it will be there. Here’s how he puts it: “In the miracle of adoration we are already with God, entirely with God, and the boundary between time and eternity is removed.”
To quote Lohfink’s exact words, he says, “Time can stand still! And it stands still when we’re in pure admiration, in awe, in wonder, in adoration. In those moments we stand outside of ourselves, in the purest form of love that exists. At that moment too we are in heaven, not having a foretaste of heaven, but actually being in heaven. Eternity will be like that, one moment like a thousand years and a thousand years like one moment.”
“When we adore, time stands still – and we are in heaven!”
https://ost.edu/when-time-stands-still/ By Fr. Ron Rolheiser, OMI. This article originally appeared on ronrolheiser.com.
Prayer:
Abba thank You for the many ways that You lead us to the things that You want us to know. Thank You for teaching us to seek you and for speaking to us along the way. Thank You for showing us just a small glimpse of heaven, a place where we can worship and adore You forever. and Abba we thank You for Your word in Revelation chapter 22, verses 5-9 that says, “There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever!” Thank You for this hope that we have in You and what You did for us.
In Jesus Name,
Amen