It is 4 days until I defend my thesis, trying to get that PhD. I am currently in a time paradox. Everyone keeps telling me “YOU’RE SO CLOSE!!” True... in the scheme of my life, 4 days is a very short amount of time. BUT because I’ve waited 7 years for this and because I still have SO much work to do AND I’m working like 15 hours a day, the days seem much longer than a mere 24 hours! How can it be a short and long amount of time? If you ask me, this silliness is a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff…
Even science doesn’t understand time. It’s often described as the fourth dimension, but there are so many different theories of how time works.
A Few Possible Theories:
- We made up the idea of time to easily describe motion, to give it a reference
- We are a prisoner to time; we can move along any of the other 3 dimensions, but we are stuck in this one moment of time, unable to transition forwards or backwards arbitrarily
- The theory of the “growing block universe” states that the future doesn’t exist yet and with the passage of time, more of the world comes into being
- The theory of presentism says neither past or future exist, there is only the present
- The theory of eternalism says that all moments of time are as real as each other and are already in existence; we are simply only experiencing one at a time.
- Lee Smolin hypothesizes that the laws of physics are not fixed, but rather evolve over time via a form of cosmological natural selection.
I can’t even wrap my mind around that last theory… And these are just a few. There are so many ideas out there! It’s fascinating to read about them and posture what that means to my life if some of them were true.
As complicated and confusing as time is, it’s got nothing on the book of Revelations. This book is a bizarro mixture of warnings, prophecies, and visions, practically all of which are incredibly vague, and some of which are just weird. There are plagues, earthquakes, beasts, angels, demons, and locusts with human faces and scorpion stings. Like time, there are many theories about how to interpret it. Some people take it literally. Others think it was a prophecy, but for past events. Still others believe it is a prophecy of world events to come.
Personally, every time I read part of it, I feel like I have more questions. So recently when I was thinking how Revelations speaks of an eternal feast, ”…Blessed are those who have been called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.”(Rev 19:9), I started to ask questions about time in heaven.
Now time in heaven is a bit different than the time of all those theories previously listed. What we think of as “God’s Time,” is not time at all; it's not marked by the past, the present, or the future. In the second book of Peter he explains, “…with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” But no matter which way you look at it, we are going to be dining at this banquet with our God for ETERNITY! That’s an infinite amount of “time”.
I may think the next four days feel like eternity, but we are talking about actual eternity. I love my husband and pledged every day of the rest of my life with him, but there are still times when I need some time away from him. So who is this God that I am going to spend all of eternity with? This is something to seriously consider. Is He going to be the God of wrath and justice of the Old Testament? Or will He be the God of loving your neighbor of the New Testament? Trick question. It’s both!
But for me, I am all about knowledge; I don’t like surprises. I want to have all the facts. So for the rest of my time on this Earth, whether it’s already fated or whether that future doesn’t exist yet, I’m going to spend that time learning all I can about this God that I will be spending eternity with. Every second will be spent towards learning the truth and the beauty of Him.
