You have to understand how time and eternity interact. I was taught there's a time-line, that there was eternity, then time, then eternity again. It was depicted graphically like this: eternity) -----------time----------(eternity . But a better image of the time/eternity relationship is a wheel.
A wheel has a hub and a rim... now picture God and eternity existing in the hub, while time curves along the rim. This relationship gives God the ability to reach out and touch any point in time, at any time, like randomly inserted spokes.
To illustrate; from eternity/the hub, God can reach out and do something in David’s time. Having done that, He can pull back then reach out to Abraham’s time. Next He could reach out to your time. Then reach out and go see Peter. Again, like lacing a wheel with spokes.
With this image we can then answer many questions, like how can God be with everyone all the time at the same time. Suppose on the day you are born, God reaches out from the hub to your spot on the rim to spend your entire life with you. Then when your time ends He brings you home. Then He reaches from the hub again to the spot on the rim where your best friend is born, and spends their life with them, until He brings them home. The He reaches yet again when someone else is born and spends their life with them, until they come home. On and on, walking with each and every one of us one at a time, while all at the same time.
It also helps us see the power of praise and thanksgiving for answered prayers. Our rim/time based after-the-fact praise and thanksgiving enter eternity/the hub before God ... God in the hub says wow s/he was really grateful for that answered prayer ... so He then reaches out to the rim to give a blessing to our request – which here on the rim is at a point that's behind us ... and puts in motion the answer to the prayer or request that we will at a later date express true appreciation for.
God is not constrained to our time line. He has access to all of time, all of the time. Even that which is behind us. And visualizing a wheel helps us to see that.
Regarding the resurrection, on our time-line rim, our body dirt naps until that resurrection. But in the hub, or eternity, it arrives at the same time our spirit does. Thus even tho in time (the rim) the body sleeps, in the hub/eternity the thief and his body both arrive in paradise that very day.