The Bible is full of a lot of “times” which span enormous periods for illustrative purposes, to compare the timeless eternal nature of God with our temporary, mortal existence on Earth.

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.

Deuteronomy 7:9

Let’s take this one literally for a moment. It’s most definitely a figure of speech, but when I read it in preparation for this I thought about the expression. When we say “generation” we mean two things at once: a pair producing offspring and the time it takes for that to happen all over again. So how long is that interval? Wikipedia says 20 to 30 years, so lets average that to 25.

Since the promises of Deuteronomy were set up in the in Moses lifetime, 1400s BC according to the Bible’s timeline, that makes us roughly 3400 years into this covenant of love. Only 21,500 years left!

God has patience and faithful love for us. What response will we give him? We only have a few hundred generations left to get it right!

Ethan Kirl