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Des Plaines, IL. March, 2011. 

Time, flowing like a river to the sea… Or is it? Did you ever stop to think about time? We know from Einstein's theories on relativity that time is not a constant, and just like a river, it flows faster at some points (or velocities) and slower at others. But if time is like a river, it ends at the sea, and the sea is eternity. Because time is so linked to space, distance, and gravity, we can imagine that time began shortly after the "big bang" once there was such a thing as distance; that is to say, once it took "time" for an interacting particle, such as a photon, to to move between particles. Can we go further and imagine "no time at all"? That is a bit difficult because going back "before" the big bang to a time before time is an oxymoron.

It doesn't make sense. We want it to; in our typical steady state understanding of the universe, we can think in terms of a big black emptiness that suddenly is split by a blinding flash. The facts are, however, that there was no time before the big bang. Outside of time as we know it, there is no such thing as the beginning of time. I'm not a theoretical physicist, so if anyone knows one out there who can explain it to me, I'd appreciate it, but I don't even know how they can say that the universe is 7-point-something billion years old! Back at that concentration of matter/forces, time would have stretched back into infinity, just like it does past the event-horizon of a black hole.

Actually, I've heard the big bang described as the opposite of a black hole, so maybe time started as an "all-over now" rather than a demarcation in infinity. Could eternity be described as all of past time stretching back to infinity, plus the present, plus all of future time stretching forward into infinity? I don't think so, because we would be using our time experience to describe something outside of time. After all, time is a part of the universe, a part of creation, and as such it has a beginning and an end. past those "bounds", there is no time, only the ever-present now. Caveat: that ever-present now also encompasses all of created time, not living in it, but co-existing with it.

One thing that I've though about in my musings on time is that time gives us the ability to learn, without time, there is only knowledge. Not necessarily complete knowledge - if you are a finite being, having a beginning, then that knowledge would be limited to what you have learned while in time. Can additional knowledge be imparted? Yes. Can it be acquired through learning? No. That takes time, and eternity is not just a whole lot of time, it's the ever present now. That's why, we've been told, it is so important to use time wisely - to not waste time. Some might say that that is exactly what I'm doing right now.

Another thing about time, is that we tend to think of ourselves as eternal - "After all, tomorrow is another day" - yet we know that our lives will come to an end. We just tend not to think about it in those terms. As we get older, we look back and wonder "where did all that time go?" We start to plan for retirement a bit more earnestly. We try to get back in shape. We try to ignore the "impending doom". Actually, those are all good things to do. We should try to concentrate more on the "now".

Bob, a good friend of mine, retired a few years back, and set off on a trip around the world. Halfway through the trip he discovered that he had cancer. He made it home just in time to die. It's a sad story, especially for his family. All their plans gone to naught. I've often wondered, did Bob use that time he had left wisely? Was it a sad story for Bob, or was it a blessing? To know that you've only got a short time left, you can concentrate on what's most important; getting to know your God. Yes, the old line "Prepare to meet your Maker" was intended to be sarcasm, but there is truth to it. After all, God didn't create us to populate the earth. He created us to populate heaven.

Get to know God now so you won't have a lot of catching-up to do at the "last minute"... Prepare now for your retirement in the eternal now.

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