In this episode a brilliant scientist is affected by his own experiment with time and alternate universes and in the medical bay of the "Enterprise" expresses his bewilderment to his wife by saying “I’m having trouble holding the moment.” His body was still physically in this world but his perceptions, logic and emotions were focused on a different reality.
Any Christian who takes seriously the transformation of the new birth and the different mindset he senses has already experienced the scientist’s disorientation. Paul instructed the Phillipians to “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” and he told the Romans to be “transformed” by the renewing of their minds so they could find out for themselves what God wanted them to do.
It is not something that is natural to the human nature either to do personally or to relate to in someone else. One of the reasons Jesus was not understood was that his answers revealed God’s perception of man’s issues and man had no common reference. Jesus tried to bridge the gap with parables but even then the elect apostles needed explanations to get the point. He once spoke of this difficulty when he said "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe, how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?" People could tell by the miracles that his grasp of God’s truth was superior to their own but they could not rise to his level until He indwelt them by Holy Spirit. Then the weak, the timid, the frightened apostles could speak with such power and authority that it was obvious that they had been with Jesus.
The “flesh”, our humanness, continues to exert a powerful influence over the Christian and often neutralizes the effectiveness of our new nature and the privileged position we hold as children of God who can approach the creator of the Universe with the simplicity of a child and ask him for whatever we need. The child of God who languishes in Earthiness can not help being miserable and though the word seems to say in 1 Cor 3:15 that he will be saved, it will nevertheless be as though he is a stick of wood that is plucked from the fire, having lost all that God meant for him to have and to be.
Sometimes, Christians have been asked to suffer death for their faith starting with Stephen’s stoning (soon after Jesus’ ascension) and continuing into our present day as Christians in India
We are accustomed to look for acceptance from our fellow men as a measure of whether we are doing the right thing but ultimately the world is Christ’s enemy and if we follow him closely we also will have troubles in this world. (John 16:33) Christ knew that the hour of his torturous death and the thing he feared most, the separation from his Father was at hand, but he who inspired Paul to write the Ephesians (6:13) “…having done all to stand” gave us the example of himself. Oh God. Help us to “Hold the Moment”.
