Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Time and Eternity Part 2
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light." and there was light. Genesis 1: 1-3
Or we could also say, "In the beginning God created space, matter and energy." I think I am a strange hybrid: a philosophical geek. I find it exciting to think of God speaking worlds, stars, angels and you and I into being. I'm still trying to understand the whole concept of time expanding as an object travels faster. But it would seem that would impact our understanding of how long ago the light from a distant star originated. It really could have been within 6,000 years!
The fourth dimension: Space, matter and energy are measured in units that we standardize so that we can communicate and record them. They occupy dimensions as we do--length and width, weight and power. Since the development of extremely precise atomic clocks we have seen that time is impacted by gravity and velocity, making it a fourth dimension. So the answer to the doubter's question, "Who created God?" is that God created time, and existed eternally outside time and space. He is not part of creation, He is the Creator.
The time parade: I like to think of my life in time as a parade. I might be sitting along the street watching as different bands or floats come into view. Or I might be in the parade, marching in a band, or throwing candy to people I pass. But whether I am passively watching or actively performing, I don't know what I will experience next until it comes into view. I think of God as flying above in a helicopter. He can see the whole parade, beginning to end. He knows what choices we will make from His eternal perspective. And whether I watch, or march, or fly, I must remember that the parade is finite. When it ends, I step into eternity to meet God. I won't be waiting for my loved ones to join me--they will be there too somehow, and we will know how it all worked out from our lofty vantage point way above the parade of life/time. We will see how our actions impacted God's plan for our lives and for others, where we succeeded and where we failed.
Or we could also say, "In the beginning God created space, matter and energy." I think I am a strange hybrid: a philosophical geek. I find it exciting to think of God speaking worlds, stars, angels and you and I into being. I'm still trying to understand the whole concept of time expanding as an object travels faster. But it would seem that would impact our understanding of how long ago the light from a distant star originated. It really could have been within 6,000 years!
The fourth dimension: Space, matter and energy are measured in units that we standardize so that we can communicate and record them. They occupy dimensions as we do--length and width, weight and power. Since the development of extremely precise atomic clocks we have seen that time is impacted by gravity and velocity, making it a fourth dimension. So the answer to the doubter's question, "Who created God?" is that God created time, and existed eternally outside time and space. He is not part of creation, He is the Creator.
The time parade: I like to think of my life in time as a parade. I might be sitting along the street watching as different bands or floats come into view. Or I might be in the parade, marching in a band, or throwing candy to people I pass. But whether I am passively watching or actively performing, I don't know what I will experience next until it comes into view. I think of God as flying above in a helicopter. He can see the whole parade, beginning to end. He knows what choices we will make from His eternal perspective. And whether I watch, or march, or fly, I must remember that the parade is finite. When it ends, I step into eternity to meet God. I won't be waiting for my loved ones to join me--they will be there too somehow, and we will know how it all worked out from our lofty vantage point way above the parade of life/time. We will see how our actions impacted God's plan for our lives and for others, where we succeeded and where we failed.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Time and Eternity Part 1
"Time is what keeps everything from happening at once!" I used to really love science fiction and my favorite stories involved time travel. It is still fascinating to imagine what the world I live in was like a century ago, or longer. I had an opportunity a number of years ago to go through the Cannon Falls Beacon archives while helping Valerie do a project for school. We went down into the basement of the Beacon office where they were stored, laid out flat in piles. I love the smell of old books, old newspapers. I read several sequential weeks, and the effect on me was as if I were suddenly a stranger in town. The mayor, the preachers, the school bond issue, the scandals, the births and deaths, all started to hang together as I got a picture of a community of people who all knew each other and had an awareness of a world around them that I could see is lost to us now. "The Great War" (was that the War to end all Wars?) wasn't even on the radar yet. They still referenced the Civil War as a commonly known event. Those people considered my town theirs. And it was. Where are they now? Where will I be in a century? When I start to think about times gone by, people no longer around, and the persistant, relentless, forward only progression we are currently trapped in, I get sad. And I would love to go back and visit "the good old days" which at the time didn't seem all that great. My neighbor down the road wrote a book a few years ago, (Natalie Thomas, but which book?) In it, a character through some technological wonder, had an opportunity to go back to a day of his choosing so he could talk once more to his father. To his total frustration though, his 12 year old self, just ignored his dad, focusing on whatever it is a 12 year old thinks is important at the moment. The whole opportunity was wasted, again! I'll bet that's what I'd do. Not give that person a hug or tell them I loved them, but roll my eyes and ask them to please pick up their shoes. And then rush off to do whatever my old self thinks is important. That is a lesson I hope my current self figures out--people, not things. Eternity trumps schedule.
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