Time travel, blurbs and a song…..

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Now the day of your death is near.’  Deuteronomy 31:14

So what is there left for Moses to do? He urges the people to read the whole law together every seven years when all the people are gathered together ‘in the year for canceling debts, during the Festival of Tabernacles’. This is how they will remind themselves of what God requires. This is how they will remember.

And then Moses presents himself with Joshua at the tent of meeting so that God can commission Joshua for his new role. God knows what is going to happen. After all, God is God. God knows everything. It’s naturally mind-bending for us to try to comprehend how God can see the whole of the history of the universe is one go. People argue about how we can have free will when everything is preordained and predestined. How could God see it all and not want to intervene? How could he just let it all unfold knowing what He knows?

We cannot understand. We are coming at it with our limited human minds. We will never understand.

That doesn’t stop us trying.

I’ve just read two novels about time travel and altering history. The first was ‘The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August’ by Claire North. This is the blurb –

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.

No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.

Until now.

As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. ‘I nearly missed you, Doctor August,’ she says. ‘I need to send a message.’

This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

This novel is really, really good. In fact, when I got the the end, I told Andy with sadness that I should never attempt to write a novel again because nothing I could write would ever match up to this.

So if you could live your life over and over again, what adjustments would you make? How would you life be different? What would you attempt to change? Sometimes the notion that we only have one life can be overwhelming…….

And then there is ‘Time and Time Again’ by Ben Elton. I am a loyal follower of Ben Elton. I loved him as a comedian and I loved him as a humorous satirical author and now I love him as a more serious historical author. I have every one of his books. This is his latest.

It’s the 1st of June 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be.

Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history.

Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century?

And, if so, could another single bullet save it?

Hugh Stanton finds a way to travel back in time from 2025 to 1914 and answers this question for himself.

If you had one chance to change history, what would you do?

What would your answer be?

Anyway, back to our all-seeing, all-knowing God who is beyond all human understanding. The God who knows exactly how things are going to pan out (how heartbreaking must that be? How passionate must His urging have been for the people to choose a different path?)

He shares with Moses what will happen after his death –

You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them.  Deuteronomy 31:16

He shares with Moses how He will react –

And in that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed.  Deuteronomy 31:17

He shares with Moses how the people will react –

In that day they will ask, ‘Have not these disasters come on us because our God is not with us?’  Deuteronomy 31:17

Which sounds familiar. Isn’t that what we hear when a natural disaster (an act of god) destroys countless homes and lives. How can God allow this to happen? Aren’t these the words on our lips when we watch reports of acts of unspeakable cruelty on the news? How can there be a God when things like this are happening? Isn’t this how we react to the news of a terrible tragedy striking someone close to us? God is not God. God is not here. God is not real.

Because we simply cannot understand how God can see all and know all and not intervene. How He does not change the course of history. How he does not protect his world from disaster and his people from suffering. (and then what is the role of prayer if God allows everything to unfold without intervening – prayer is more of a mystery than we often let on as well!).

And we do not want to accept that some of these awful events may be the result of the choices made by mankind throughout history and sometimes the consequences of our own personal lifestyle choices (and sometimes seemingly completely random).

Whatever confusion and questions we have, ‘God is not with us’ is not an option (imho). God is always with us. This is His promise to us. Whatever happens, God is with us.

So how will Moses convey all this to the people?

God tells Moses to write a song. A song that will be taught to all the Israelites. A song that will be sung by all the Israelites. A song that will be passed on from generation to generation. A song that will be remembered for all time.

A song.

The power of music. The power of lyrics. A song that will change lives.

What is your song? Which song changed your life?