I Am Because You Are September 19, 2025 Devotional

JOHN 8:56-58 | ⁵⁶ Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.” ⁵⁷ Then the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” ⁵⁸ Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”

When Jesus says "Before Abraham was, I Am," He is alluding to the different relationship God has with time. For us, time is sequential and linear, and we move from the present forward into the future, and as we do, the present becomes the past. In any one present moment we can look back in memory and forward in anticipation. But God is the creator of time. He can experience the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. Every moment of time is alive and real to God. The community of Celtic Christians on the island of Iona, founded by St. Columba, sometimes referred to this as the "eternal now." Since all aspects of time are real and immediate to God. This also means that through God, previous events like the Cross and Resurrection, can become real, powerful, and present to us now.

What is your relationship with time like? Are you fully alive in the present?

Gracious God,

Help me to look back with gratitude and forward with hope. Let me be fully alive now, treasuring the present as a present.

Amen.