Time and Timelessness

All morning, since snapping a picture of the view from my back porch, I have thought about how insignificant a season, a year, even a century is in terms of human life.

My wife often asks the "why" behind my thoughts. After 76 years of watching global conflicts, yes even at times in America, (God help us as a people Tuesday, Nov.5), this constant struggle with wisdom and generational maturation causes me pause.

How long should true maturity take!

I must assume that we are slow learners? Even the institutional church, most earnest in its efforts, yet still it seems able to adjust its understanding and application of God, only about every 500 years. Even then, good people die with each shift!

But what is 500 years when we observe time relative to the millions of galaxies, stars so far away that they have burned out by the time we even see them?

The text that frames much of our biblical understanding, "A thousand years is but a day," one revolution of the earth's circumference (though traveling a dizzing 1000 miles per hour); a year merely one trip around the Sun, which if it burned out, we would only realize that about 8.3 minutes later!

Perhaps 24 hours is about all the endurance we humans have, likely why we were placed on this speck of revolving dirt in the first place and then for a limited "three score and ten years."

Why are we even here, perhaps exiled until we grow up as a species!

The good news is that as you age, the days pass much faster! Time is relative, just do the math!

At 76, no longer is 24 hours what it was when I was a child. It often seemed weeks passed from the time I got to church until time to go home with a friend. Though somehow it sped up shortly after lunch, as play time seemed much shorter; soon time to clean for Sunday night service.

Now a day is a minute, a month a fast week, a year a quarter, a decade...see what I mean.

It gets more brief still, relative to the life of galaxies, some thought to billions of years old. Our lives in comparison, milliseconds!!

By the way, the oldest known galaxy is GLASS-z13, which formed 300 million years after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago. The James Webb Space Telescope only recently discovered this galaxy.

So a thousand years of human life is but a day! Now I understand why this human struggles so in his pursuit with knowing this timeless Being called, Love!

I'm thankful for the Christ, a most recent example of how this Being actually lived while wrapped in human flesh! Now to be like Him!