Out of Time
The passage of time has always been a bit mysterious to me. We measure time with the revolution of the earth around the sun, with calendars and with watches, and before and after Christ was born. But time passes whether we measure it or not. It passes around us and through us and in spite of us. And I never quite feel that I am a part of it. My body surely feels the ravages of time, but my essence does not.
30 years have gone by since I graduated from high school. 30. These years have been full of heartache and joy, laughter and tears, busyness and boredom. But I cannot comprehend what 30 years really is. And I got to thinking, as I am known to do. Why is time so hard to comprehend? Why does it seem to crawl and race and yet at the same time, not pass at all? Why do I look at the calendar to mark the passage of time or to see what I have planned that week, but still feel like I am not really a part of time? It's 10:30 in the morning, and I am writing, yet I don't fit into time. I feel out of time. Of course, we need to measure time so we can be on time for events and appointments, so we know when to celebrate holidays and know when to sow and when to reap. But it also seems so futile to me.
And it occurred to me that while we can measure time, we can't measure eternity. So while we are in bodies that will expire in time, our souls will live forever. The concept of years or time is almost foreign to a timeless soul. My mind can understand time to a degree, but my soul cannot. In that disparity comes my confusion, in that gulf comes my incomprehension. We see someone we haven't seen in 30 years and say how we can't believe all that time has passed, and how they look the same as always and we pick up a conversation as if we had never parted, their voices and mannerisms the same. And this ran through my mind over and over, yet I was unable to reconcile these thoughts. But somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains something clicked in my mind. It doesn't make sense because we are on a journey that will never end, and you can't measure something that is endless.
As I lay in my own bed for the first time in 4 days, listening to a soft rain on the roof, it seemed that I had been gone for 30 years and for no time at all. As if I had traveled back in time and spent all those years reliving memories and returned to find no one knew I had been gone. Driving around a city I knew so well and all the memories flooding back into my mind- this intersection and that restaurant, this country road and that building. Things changed and yet were the same. Several times over the 4 days I would come upon a place I knew well as a child, and for a moment, I was 17 years old again. As if no time had passed, and yet a lifetime.
30 years is nothing compared to timelessness. But those years have not been wasted, as God has been at work in me. He will continue to do so for as much time as He sees fit. But in the grand scheme of things, those years will seem as nothing in the face of eternity. Time will continue without me and I will continue without time, freed from the human constraint of measuring time, and finally existing as we were meant. The creation living with her Creator, who is without time. Truly out of time.
30 years have gone by since I graduated from high school. 30. These years have been full of heartache and joy, laughter and tears, busyness and boredom. But I cannot comprehend what 30 years really is. And I got to thinking, as I am known to do. Why is time so hard to comprehend? Why does it seem to crawl and race and yet at the same time, not pass at all? Why do I look at the calendar to mark the passage of time or to see what I have planned that week, but still feel like I am not really a part of time? It's 10:30 in the morning, and I am writing, yet I don't fit into time. I feel out of time. Of course, we need to measure time so we can be on time for events and appointments, so we know when to celebrate holidays and know when to sow and when to reap. But it also seems so futile to me.
And it occurred to me that while we can measure time, we can't measure eternity. So while we are in bodies that will expire in time, our souls will live forever. The concept of years or time is almost foreign to a timeless soul. My mind can understand time to a degree, but my soul cannot. In that disparity comes my confusion, in that gulf comes my incomprehension. We see someone we haven't seen in 30 years and say how we can't believe all that time has passed, and how they look the same as always and we pick up a conversation as if we had never parted, their voices and mannerisms the same. And this ran through my mind over and over, yet I was unable to reconcile these thoughts. But somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains something clicked in my mind. It doesn't make sense because we are on a journey that will never end, and you can't measure something that is endless.
As I lay in my own bed for the first time in 4 days, listening to a soft rain on the roof, it seemed that I had been gone for 30 years and for no time at all. As if I had traveled back in time and spent all those years reliving memories and returned to find no one knew I had been gone. Driving around a city I knew so well and all the memories flooding back into my mind- this intersection and that restaurant, this country road and that building. Things changed and yet were the same. Several times over the 4 days I would come upon a place I knew well as a child, and for a moment, I was 17 years old again. As if no time had passed, and yet a lifetime.
30 years is nothing compared to timelessness. But those years have not been wasted, as God has been at work in me. He will continue to do so for as much time as He sees fit. But in the grand scheme of things, those years will seem as nothing in the face of eternity. Time will continue without me and I will continue without time, freed from the human constraint of measuring time, and finally existing as we were meant. The creation living with her Creator, who is without time. Truly out of time.
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