Gen 29:20, So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. In our reading, we now come to the story of Jacob and his time of servitude for the sake of earning the right to wed Rachel whom he loved. This vibrancy of his love for Rachel is manifested in the fact that although it took seven years of toil and energy and time and struggle and conflict and loss of freedom to come and go as he wished, to Jacob, is seemed to be but a few days. 
The writer of Genesis, in this phraseology, points us back to Gen 27:42-45. There, after the deception of Isaac by Jacob to receive the blessing, we read the following: Now when the words of her elder son Esau were reported to Rebekah, she sent and called her younger son Jacob, and said to him, "Behold your brother Esau is consoling himself concerning you, by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice, and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban! "And stay with him a few days, until your brother's fury subsides, until your brother's anger against you subsides, and he forgets what you did to him. Then I shall send and get you from there. Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?" 
Note that Rebekah sent Jacob to Laban for a few days until Esau calmed down. Those few days eventually amounted to over 20 years of working for Laban. However, for Jacob, those years were as but a few days. This brings to mind the fact that, to us, when love is the focal point our attention, the essence of time becomes blurred under the reality of what is of utmost importance. 
This morning, let us see how the Lord overwhelms the tool of time within His plan and purpose of expressing His Nature of Love in all His grace and mercy in the lives of those whom He calls unto Himself. Just as years seemed to be but as days to Jacob, to the Lord, years or days mean nothing in the terms of His heart of salvation. This is to be of great comfort to those of us who have been praying for the salvation and the work of God in the lives of our loved ones. There are many who have been praying for husbands, for wives, for children, for parents, for friends and associates for as long as decades upon decades. We tend to get impatient or to declare that nothing will ever change with them. However, that is not how we are to consider the passing of time in the economy of God’s grace.
The Apostle Peter heartens us to this in 2 Peter 3:8+9. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 
As human beings, we are instilled with a sense of time that can rule our every motive, our every thought, our every decision. We tend to place all things within the conceptual framework of the fact that we are running out of time on this earth. We are quick to strategize and to conceptualize all things in terms of the time required set against the time that we have left to our lives. We get caught up in the numbers game and the actuary tables of our lives and the lives of others and try to reason with God that He must do something now, today before we run out of time. 
But time is the Lord’s to do with as He so chooses. We lose sight of this truth and lose patience and even our tempers with the seemingly slow pace of God’s effective working in operation. We fail to value the truth that what God does will stand for all the eternal ages of ages. He is not slow, neither is He careless nor is He flustered with the daily pace that He has set into place. He will do all that He has determined to do in the time frame that He has created and that He directs. 
Our place is to see today in the heart of our relationship with God and to respond to Him today as He so directs. The Writer to the Hebrews so encourages us as set forth in Heb 3:13-15. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end; while it is said, "Today if you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me." 
Just as we cannot get impatient with the timing of the manifest work of God’s hand so also must we not put off that which He commands of us this day. Here, to, we tend to see time as something that we can manipulate in terms of what we have time to do today and what we can push off until later. We practice the very course of being as gods unto ourselves as was at the very heart of the fall of Adam. Because we see God doing things within the spatial confines of time as He so determines, we think that we have that very same capability. We try to manipulate our time to fit our desires and our plans and our purposes. We put off our obedience and our commitment to God until a time of our choosing rather than His choosing, and that will never succeed. Just like the Israelites, who provoked God in the wilderness, so we provoke God when we harden our hearts with the excuse that we have time to honor God tomorrow rather than today. 
The Apostle Paul carries this forward into the reality of our daily lives in Jesus Christ. So often, we bemoan the fact that our lives are filled with anguish and with hard times and with suffering. It appears to us that difficulties will never come to an end. Yet, when we have the proper perspective that our lives are hid in Jesus Christ, that all that we undergo is for the determined purpose of creating in us that trust and that faith and that utter reliance upon God to see us through, in His so great love; when we consider unto the immeasurable depths of eternity, we cannot but take each day, and all that it contains, in line with that which is God’s plan and purpose in our lives.  
Please turn to 2 Tim 1:8-14 and read along with me. 2 Tim 1:8-14, Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me His prisoner; but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day. Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. 
Each day is another day to treasure the mighty work of God’s hand in our lives. Just as the years seemed to Jacob, to be as days, so are the years and decades of our lives so filled with the love of God manifested moment-by-moment into our hearts. As we give ourselves over the heart of God, so will each day present another opportunity for His grace and His mercy and His abiding presence to be experienced and enjoyed in His fullness and in His splendor and in His love.
Yes, the sufferings will be there, but in light of the treasure of the life that is now ours in Jesus Christ, that daily grind, and the trial it brings, will be seen as the means by which our eyes and our minds and our hearts are opened to the glory of God. As with Jacob, the years will seem but as days in the joy of the love that we find expressed in the living reality of our Lord and Savior. 
Please recognize that we do not minimize the death blows that we experience. We rather see them in the light and the face of the One in whom that death is transformed into eternal life. We know that we must die that He can live forth in the purity of God’s revealed Being of Love. As we are so encouraged in 2 Cor 5:14-19, and again please follow along. 2 Cor 5:14-19, For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf. Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 
This great expression and declaration of the Love of God toward us reveals that basis upon which we now view the very fabric of time in our lives. We are a completely new creation and as such, we are given the focal reality that time is no longer the controlling force of our walk on this earth. In every sense, we are translated from the rule of natural man’s fears and concerns and motivational forces, and set into the life of Jesus Christ. In Him, we are allowed to see that all things have become new in deed. Even to the fact that what we suffer is only serving to show forth God’s glory in greater clarity and love in our walk with Him. 
In this light we join our hearts with that expressed in Col 1:3-12. Please turn to it as we rejoice together in what we read. Col 1:3-12, We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints; because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of which you previously heard in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, just as in all the world also it is constantly bearing fruit and increasing, even as it has been doing in you also since the day you heard of it and understood the grace of God in truth; just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow bond-servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, and he also informed us of your love in the Spirit. For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 
	Note that there are several supremely important days addressed in this passage. The first is the day of hearing the gospel. On that day, everything changes in our lives. We are the recipients of the new life of Jesus Christ as we so respond to the call of God to believe upon Him. In that day, all our years of death in sin are forever removed from us and we are given life in Jesus Christ. Our every sense of time becomes focused into the fact that time is simply the tool used by God to effect His eternal purposes of love in our lives.
	The second day of this passage is the day that our eyes are removed from looking at our wants to see the needs of others. We are instilled with the concern for others in our communication with God. We begin to pray constantly that they would come to know and to appreciate and to experience His so great love. There develops, not just a love for God, but a love for others in their walk with Him. We take them into our hearts for the sake of God to bless and to keep and to manifest His grace and His love and HIs life into them in greater measure, no matter how much time is required or passes.
	This brings us full circle to our morning’s passage with Jacob and his consideration of all those years as but a few days in the terms of time in service for the sake of his beloved Rachel. That is the heart with which we so view God and each other in Him. We see our time of service on this earth only as the token expression of our heart of love for the benefit of others to the glory of God. As we serve the Lord, the days and the weeks and the months and the years and the decades fade into mere wisps within eternity. We never lose the heart-felt love of doing that which pleases and honors our Lord God Almighty. 
	As well, in that service unto Him, we take our fellow believers and our loved ones and associates into our hearts for their sake of coming into such a living relationship with God. It matters not the amount of time required in labor or the number of years that pass in fleeting abandon, we live to serve to the glory of God. We do not give up hope and we do not grow tired or weary or discouraged, no matter the number of years that pass. We count on the Lord to make Himself the very essence of Love in the lives and hearts of those whom He puts into our prayers and into our course of walk on this earth, today, tomorrow, and throughout our time in this physical realm. So be it!
So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few days because of his love for her. 

This morning’s benediction is Titus 2:11-14. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. Amen.