Some people think that time is speeding up, or that God is turning our clocks faster and faster. The whole world is on fast-forward, and that’s why it’s so hard to fit everything into a day. That’s why it only seems like yesterday when we were chewing on our socks and having our diapers changed…
Some will even say that God has sped time up so as to get us to the Rapture quicker, and to get the world sorted out. That would be nice, but unfortunately the idea isn’t Biblical, and it doesn’t comply with science.
(My apologies to those few of you who may have read this article before in one of my “Mind Burp” posts. This is an edited version).
NOTHING NEW
Bible authors, writing thousands of years ago, observed that a lifetime seems to pass in the twinkling of an eye. James said:
“What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14).
The book of Job is thought to be the oldest book in the Bible, but even Job said:
“Man…springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure” (Job 14:1-2).
So the concept of the shortness of time is nothing new.
I’m no physicist, but I do know enough to know that time is inextricably one with space and matter, and so with every single particle in the universe. If time were “sped up”, so also would be the operations of the atoms in your brain, your legs, your car, and in everything around you, so that you would not notice any difference! It’s like a fast-forward piece of video: all the actions and expressions of people in the video are the same as they are at normal speed-just faster. The calculations of Einstein, to some extent demonstrated to be valid, show that while a man travelling at half the speed of light in space would come back to earth having aged less than his contemporaries, his own experience on that space ship would not have given him any impression that time was going by slower for him than it had done for those on earth. It would seem like ordinary time passing by.
With God one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. He is eternal and outside of time, and He is not affected by it, so he doesn’t have to be “in a hurry” to do anything.
No, I don’t think time has been sped up. Instead, I think we’re all guilty of trying to fit more and more into our day, and we’re all being pushed by our governments and our own proclivities to go faster all the time. The more you try to fit into your day, the quicker time will seem to go. When we work harder the day seems to go by quicker. However, if we were to sit quietly and watch the clock for a day, time would seem to have “slowed down” considerably, and we may find ourselves getting rather relaxed…and perhaps even a little bored. ZZZzzz…
WHERE DOES ALL THE TIME GO ANYWAY?
While on the subject of time being short, it occurred to me, in my unscientific way, why, when looking back, our lives seem to have gone by in a flash.
Many memories are stored in our brains. However, the time over which the events transpired is not stored-it cannot be. When we look at those events from our past, they aren’t replayed in our minds over the same amount of time it took them to occur. A memory of a day we lived several years ago comes into our mind like a series of photographs or short clips of an edited video or sound-track. Memories are like a deck of cards stacked together with no space between them, or like a computer program which has been compressed to save space.
If you want to sense some of the time which seems to have vanished, you perhaps need to try to replay your memories at normal speed, with every little movement, discussion, down-time, journey and action fully played out in your mind, so that a day out ten years ago would take you a day to recall. Alas, it’s not all there is it? Perhaps that’s a good thing, because if everything were stored there would be pain, boredom, fear and unhappiness stored there also.
The lesson for us all is that we need to make the most of every day, to live life God’s way-in love and holiness, to appreciate every blessing, and to enjoy life to the max. By doing that, we won’t have to look back with regrets, but with thankfulness, and with a joyful anticipation of the future.
TARDIS IMAGE COURTESY OF © zir.com
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