My eyes finally open, just as the red numbers on the alarm clock blink to warn me that one more minute of my morning is gone.

On most days, by the time I open my eyes, my dreams have evaporated and I have no memory of the places and times my mind has visited while my body rested.

But for the last three or four nights, I’ve had dreams that intertwine the past and the present, dreams that feel as though time has dissolved. I’ve been walking around my days in a curious state of mind, thinking about this organization of our lives into what we call Time.

Or maybe my mind is tugging at the veil between the spiritual and the earthly, the mortal. The apostle Paul says we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror.

I’m thinking of a frosted windshield, on a cold winter morning, that I do not defrost completely before leaving my driveway. I peer through a small opening in the frost, concentrating on one narrow portion of road right in front of me; the rest of the world is blocked from my sight. And even that small lens to the world sometimes fogs over as my warm breath condenses on the glass, and I must wipe away the cloudiness. That’s a fair description of how we mortals see.

I cannot tell you where my life will go today. And many times, I wonder if I even understand the past, the years I have lived. I cannot explain how God can be outside of time. I do not know how the Spirit of God lives within me. I cannot comprehend how God can know what I have not yet lived. I cannot understand … oh, so many, many things.

The one thing I do know is that I can say to my Father, I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hands. When it is impossible for me to see more than a tiny glimpse, when I have no power over tomorrow, when I have many questions with no answers … I take comfort in knowing that the Almighty God claims me as his own.

Jesus knew his life on this earth was almost over. In the few hours he had left, he tried to prepare his disciples and comfort them. “Don’t let your hearts be troubled,” he told them. “Trust in God, and trust also in me. I am going away, but I’ll be back. And you know the way to where I am going.”

If I would have been in that room, I can imagine the panic I would have felt.

What? He’s leaving? What’s happening? This is not what I had planned, not what I’d hoped for. Not what I signed up for when I left my other life behind. And he says we know the way to wherever he’s going? I have no idea what he’s talking about.

And Jesus still says to me today, as he did to his disciples then, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father, except through me.

He does not give an answer to their frantic questions. Instead he says, “If you belong to me, then you have the way, you have truth, and you have life.

“If you belong to me, then you belong to the Father. This is how to live, not by answering all the questions, but by trusting God and trusting me.”

The most crucial question of your life is, To whom do you belong?

And to that question, child of God, there is an answer.

Scriptures: 1 Cor 13:12 (NLT), Psalm 31:14 (NIV), John 14:1,4, 6 (NLT)