Timeless Torah

The moral should have been obvious. In this week's Torah reading, G-d had commanded the Israelites to offer the Passover sacrifice as they did a year earlier, on the eve of the Exodus. Now everything should have been fine and everyone should have followed instructions. Except that there was this one group of Jews who were in a state of ritual impurity, a state which prevented them from participating in the festival offering. Approaching Moses they protested, "Why should we be deprived? We too desire to serve G-d by bringing the lamb."
In response to their cry, G-d instituted a Second Passover. Beginning that year and for all future generations, a person who was ritually impure on Passover eve was given another opportunity one month later.
This Second Passover teaches us a simple but profound lesson. Don't write off any Jew. Everybody is given a second chance. The Talmudic Sages however, understood the moral on a deeper level. According to the dates provided by the Bible itself, this episode does not appear in chronological sequence. The lesson thus gleaned is not one of second chances but rather (in the language of the Talmud) that, "There is no earlier or later in Torah."
Every detail in Torah is instructive. The fact that the Talmud considers the case of the Second Passover to be the source of the principle that "There is no earlier or later in Torah," although the Torah abounds with many demonstrable instances of this (Rashi cites one example as early as Genesis 6:3), implies that this particular case is intrinsically connected to this particular rule.
The eternal significance of the Second Passover is that there are no missed opportunities. Even one whose compromised spiritual state prevented him from fulfilling a certain aspect of his mission in life can always do Teshuvah. This Jewish formula for rectification of a deficient past is commonly translated as repentance, but Teshuvah is more than regret for previous wrongdoings.
Repentance implies that a past misdeed will have no adverse effect on one's future. It provides a clean slate. Still, it cannot change the fact that in the past, one has failed to achieve what might have been achieved.
Teshuvah, on the other hand, which literally means return, is the endeavor to return to the past, and then undo and redo the old, to transform prior failings into virtues and fill yesterday's vacuums with content.
The group of petitioners that approached Moses did not ask that they be excused for their inability to bring the offering. They argued that they "not be deprived". That they be accorded an opportunity to fulfill an aspect of their relationship with G-d whose appointed time had found them in a spiritual state that precluded their doing so.
Thus, a Second Passover is more than second chances. It's about time replayed, or second time, if you will. And that is why, "There is no earlier or later in Torah," because a life lived by Torah is not subject to the tyranny of time. For such a life, the past is no less replete with opportunities than the future.