What is time?
I don't mean time in a sense of 'a long time' or 'a short time' since something happened. Have you ever really stopped and thought about time in relation to eternity? I wish I could bring to light something new about a biblical story in this post, but this is just something to make you think a little deeper.
I don't like to take credit for things I didn't come up with, so I must tell you that most of these thoughts originated with St. Augustine's confessions...
We often speak of eternity as 'a long time past' or 'a long time to come.' Now let me stop here and get the wheels turning inside that head of yours. Though I can never fully comprehend the idea of spending eternity somewhere, the idea of eternity to come seems a lot easier to grasp than an eternal past. Think about it...this God we claim to know has no beginning. Which raises the question, "How does something come to be from something that never was?"
It's very hard to imagine a time forever - especially if you take away the aspect of time. I'll try to explain this more clearly than it seems in my head:
I often hear that eternity is a long time, but if you think about it...how can you even measure eternity by time? I believe God is eternal, which then raises even more and deeper questions: "What was God doing all that time before He created man?" I mean, if He's never had a beginning, He's always been. As Bible believers, we claim the earth had a beginning, from which God created it. If God created us, he had a long time before us (eternity past) to be doing nothing. But, if you believe that God was doing nothing before us, then just decided to create a man in His image, where did that will arise to want to create us? If God is eternal and His will perfect, it stands to reason that God's will is eternal, because how can something new arise out of something that always IS? To God, nothing is new. To man, everything God is is new.
I don't mean time in a sense of 'a long time' or 'a short time' since something happened. Have you ever really stopped and thought about time in relation to eternity? I wish I could bring to light something new about a biblical story in this post, but this is just something to make you think a little deeper.
I don't like to take credit for things I didn't come up with, so I must tell you that most of these thoughts originated with St. Augustine's confessions...
We often speak of eternity as 'a long time past' or 'a long time to come.' Now let me stop here and get the wheels turning inside that head of yours. Though I can never fully comprehend the idea of spending eternity somewhere, the idea of eternity to come seems a lot easier to grasp than an eternal past. Think about it...this God we claim to know has no beginning. Which raises the question, "How does something come to be from something that never was?"
It's very hard to imagine a time forever - especially if you take away the aspect of time. I'll try to explain this more clearly than it seems in my head:
I often hear that eternity is a long time, but if you think about it...how can you even measure eternity by time? I believe God is eternal, which then raises even more and deeper questions: "What was God doing all that time before He created man?" I mean, if He's never had a beginning, He's always been. As Bible believers, we claim the earth had a beginning, from which God created it. If God created us, he had a long time before us (eternity past) to be doing nothing. But, if you believe that God was doing nothing before us, then just decided to create a man in His image, where did that will arise to want to create us? If God is eternal and His will perfect, it stands to reason that God's will is eternal, because how can something new arise out of something that always IS? To God, nothing is new. To man, everything God is is new.
If you're still with me, good...I lost myself there for a second.
Eternity, it seems to me, is always present. There is no eternity past, nor eternity to come...eternity is now. Sometimes I think that if I could fully grasp that, it would change dramatically every aspect of my life. Picture this: God sees Adam and Eve, Martin Luther, Adolf Hitler, you and your grandchildren's grandchildren...NOW. To even try to comprehend that brings a whole new smallness to my life...
...but at the same time, a whole new significance to it!
(to be cont'd)
