WRITTEN IN THE STARS FOR SIGNS AND TIMES PART 2 Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. Last week we spoke about the witness in the stars for signs, and today we are looking at the witness of the stars for times. When God proclaimed, "Let there be light," He initiated not only the existence of matter but also the unfolding of space and time itself. He had created an energy outside of his spiritual energy, the energy of light, the closest natural energy that can be compared and contrasted to his all-powerful Spiritual energy Created light preceded the matter that was created to become the universe of galaxies of stars, and what lies between us and the stars is not just time and space, but an immense delay of emptiness and silence that stretches across time because sound cannot travel where there are no particles to transmit it. Time is limited by the speed of light, and space is also measured by that. One light-year is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometres. With a Hubble telescope we could see a protostar heat up and eventually ignite, and we would say it is a new star, but what we observe is in fact very very old. What we see and touch in our immediate temporal world is a familiar instant, close and graspable reality, but the stars teach us about the waiting and silence of time delay and that becomes a parable concerning our faith, as we shall see. The Bible describes God’s essential nature as two things; God is light and God is love.The power of the energy of God’s light brought into being the material and temporal world of matter with its beauty of created order. But the power of God as light is also truth which speaks into our spirit, and the spiritual energy of God’s light is not limited to time and space – It is everywhere at the one time.  The power of the energy of God’s love brought into being the lifeblood of relational harmony and unity and goodness and blessing to all mankind through Jesus. For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son… (John 3:16) I have two questions.Why do we experience the delay time of God’s instant presence with us when we know he is there within us? Why do we experience an apparent distance between God and us even though we know he is closer than our own thoughts? Regarding the delay time of presence - it does not take God time to get to us, nor does it take us time to get to God. The delay occurs because it takes time for us to get away from our soul self, and into our true spiritual self in Christ. We have taught our soul to live in the immediate temporal world, which is always instant, close and graspable. But the stars teach us a parable about the waiting of delay time, and the delay time is the often reluctant yielding of our soul life to our faith-ready spirit life. Putting off our old soul self and being renewed in the mind of our spirit and putting on the New Creation spirit self. (Ephesians 4:20) Regarding the apparent distance between us and God - Our soul self lives in self-consciousness, which makes us aware of our own insufficiency of falling short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). That makes a separation between us and God (Isaiah 59:2) but it does not make a separation between God and us – he is always close. He says I will have mercy upon your unrighteousness, and your iniquities I will remember no more! (Hebrews 10.16)The Bible tells us to exchange our idea of our self as an unlovable self, for God’s idea of us as his deeply loved child (1John 3:20) who grows into his likeness because of his love for us. Our self-serving soul life should not be allowed to take the mastery over our true spiritual reality as partakers of the divine nature - ‘God with us’. Our choice to receive.Sometimes the honest thing to say is ‘I find that hard to do - Please help me Lord’.We can trust that God’s plans are unfolding in our lives eve