Probably, at one time or another, most people have felt trapped in a time-bound existence, traveling involuntarily toward an enigmatic future or perhaps toward no future at all. Time can seem an endless invisible ribbon stretching from the past, through the present, and on into the future: but is it really? We are so accustomed to a twenty-four-hour day dictated by planet earth's turning on its axis and to a year set by its orbit round the sun that we seldom challenge the assumptions behind our measurement of time.
I've found that a hypothetical exploration of outer space helps me jar loose some of these assumptions. Looking up at the stars many light-years away, we can surmise what it might be like to live on planet X orbiting another star. If that planet, inhabited by X-lings, were ten times earth's size, rotated half as fast, and orbited its particular sun twice as fast as our earth does, days and years there on X would surely be different. It is quite amusing to speculate how, if we were X-lings, we could even begin to grasp what six o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, October 10, means to earthlings light-years away. At this point, we see just how relative time is. To break free of the time trap, hypothesizing is not enough; there is need to reach out for a timeless, spiritual understanding of existence.
Study of the Bible shows we only seem to be time-bound and limited mortals. We are really spiritual immortals existing in the eternal now. Uninspired, earthbound, or matter-bound thought is blind to this spiritual fact; it sees only a limited view, while spiritually inspired thought sees quite another. For instance, Christ Jesus knew, far better than anyone else before or since his brief appearance, that man's true, substantial self is totally spiritual, Godlike, constantly reflecting divine goodness and power in the eternal now. Of course, in accomplishing his earthly mission he could be recognized by humanity only if he had a human body. He was, however, demonstrating his actual timeless, spiritual selfhood and the perfection of man.
