Book Four, Chapter 3: Time and Beyond Time

Prayer raises an honest worry. If God is listening to billions of people at once, how can he possibly pay attention to me? In Book Four, Chapter 3, Lewis offers the idea of God beyond time as a response to concerns about prayer, and as a help with the Incarnation. He also invites readers to consider what it would mean to believe God gives each person undivided attention.

Psalm 90 is a prayer that starts with God's relationship to time. "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations." Before there were mountains or an earth, "from everlasting to everlasting you are God." God is not inside the story the way we are. He is the one who stands before it and behind it.

Then the psalm gives a striking picture: "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." A watch in the night was a few hours of guard duty. A thousand years, to God, is that short. The psalm doesn't say God is rushed. It says time doesn't hem him in the way it hems us in.

Why does this matter for prayer? Our own attention is limited. When we talk with one person, we cannot fully hear another. We assume God works the same way, running low on time and attention. Psalm 90 pushes against that assumption. God isn't squeezing your request into a crowded schedule. He is the one who "formed the earth and the world," and who made time itself. So the worry that you are one voice among too many loses its grip.

Notice, too, the first line. God is a "dwelling place." That's a word of home, not a word of distance. The God who stands beyond time is also the one in whom his people live. Vastness and nearness go together here.

The psalm also admits our smallness: "You return man to dust." This isn't meant to make you feel ignored. It sets the scale honestly. We are brief, and he is not. Yet he still speaks to us: "Return, O children of man!" He invites us back.

Now for the question Lewis leaves with readers: what would it mean to believe God gives you his undivided attention? It might change how you pray. You wouldn't need to use impressive words or compete for a turn. You could speak plainly, take your time, and trust that you are fully heard.

You don't need to understand how God relates to time to benefit from this. You only need to take him at his word that he is who Psalm 90 says he is.