To Time the Impossible Time

Imagine, momentarily, that your life began only one month ago. Any memories you hold were digitally implanted after scientists accelerated through your childhood with budding technology.

Now imagine that life started just days ago. Minutes ago. Moments ago. What if you had never actually begun reading this article, and the memories of even the beginning of this sentence were given you milliseconds ago?

The fact is that we mortals cannot experience the true passage of time. We are conscious of only this infinitesimal blip of time; time that turns life into memory at the astonishing rate of sixty seconds per minute.

Although we cannot know with certainty that anything but this timeslot of consciousness exists, most of us have faith that it is so. You may think that you cannot fathom life as an instant, but in fact you cannot truly fathom otherwise. What would it be like to experience “multiple times”?

I often attempt to comprehend the “imponderables” of God’s nature: His omnipresence, His ability to communicate directly to all of us simultaneously, and most of all His eternity. How could any being see all of time from the beginning to the end? How could such a “time-less” or “extra-chronological” state even exist? Is such a dimension part of eternity?

We live with memories of the past in a infinitesimal point of the present. The future we cannot know. Perhaps God “remembers” both the past and the future. We cannot cognize His attributes. But a glimpse may be gained by imagining that He is conscious of all “times”, not just the individual “times” that we can feel.

It does not concern us practically how the Divine eternity operates. Revelation tells us that time will still be a real part of our existence with God, for “the tree of life . . . yields its fruit every month.” (Revelation 22:2) But our curiosity and our interests in the things and ways of God compel us to at least attempt to understand His nature.

“But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:1-9)

As I read over that passage, something struck me. I had always read it as “slack concerning His promises.” But it says “promise“, singular. Peter is speaking of Christ’s promise to return . . . a promise that is as true today as it was 2000 years ago.

Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

In Him,

D3

Postedin Uncategorized at 1:04 am on 11.20.05 by David S. MacMillan III