Were there angels in heaven who kept records of such things, I suspect most of us one day would be amazed to learn how often we thought, yet how little we knew, about time.
Please don’t take that as a criticism. The concept of time has long perplexed poets, painters, philosophers, physicists, and those of us who persistently look up at a wall or down at our wrist (or our phone) to learn what time it is. It might seem that attempts to learn what time it is presuppose that someone, somewhere, has determined what time is. But that presupposition is optimistic.
Most of us have a deeply intuitive sense not only that time exists, but that it matters. Even if we can’t precisely define it, we continually experience it. And many individuals, coming from many different starting points, have tried to express their perceptions about time.
Poets, going at least as far back as William Shakespeare, eloquently survey the effects of time on human beings. Often, but certainly not always, poets portray time as an enemy. The best-known painting of the Surrealist Salvador Dali, formally titled The Persistence of Memory, is more popularly known as Melting Clocks. Years after finishing the painting, Dali addressed the wide range of meanings ascribed to the work by saying even he didn’t know what it meant.
Then there are physicists and philosophers who don’t believe there’s any such thing as time. Some modern physicists use Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity to argue that in space-time, concepts such as past, present, and future are meaningless. A century earlier, the philosopher Immanuel Kant had argued that temporal order is found only in an individual’s mind and that time does not objectively exist.
The Bible takes a different approach. Although both Hebrew and Greek have several words properly translated “time,” Scripture doesn’t speculate about time’s nature. Instead of arguing for its existence or listing its qualities, the Bible simply assumes that time exists. My broad summary of the biblical view of time is that it’s something like a cosmic canvas across which God’s specific acts in the redemption of his people are sequentially unfurled.
Time is God’s creation and it remains under his direction. As such, not only is time real (contra some philosophers and physicists), time is also very good (contra some poets and painters). According to the Bible, human history, and our individual histories, are moving toward a God-established goal. Time is a gift of God that helps us track our progress. We can look back at the places where we’ve wandered off the path. We can also look ahead to get at least a glimpse of the glory God already has prepared for us.
The advent of a new calendar year is often used by individuals and organizations as an opportunity to look back and to look ahead. Both can be rewarding exercises. As Christians, we can look back and see specific points where we’ve grown in our faith. We can also gain clarity about opportunities for future growth. But, as Christians, I think our greatest joy comes from looking ahead. For there we see a God “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). And there we see our Savior, Jesus Christ, who “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).
Happy New Year.
