WHEN MY CHILDREN WERE YOUNG, I worked in business, was a full-time student, volunteered in a parent-teacher association, and served in church. I managed my days in tiny increments of time, and I used time that other people didn't. For instance, doing my homework at one in the morning. I felt like I was living in a vise. I longed to just step out of time.
That's when I began to notice that great minds for centuries have questioned whether or not time, as we know it, even exists. The debate continues today as exemplified in this arresting statement: "Despite the almost universal assumption by physicists that time is real, time is an experience and only an experience, and without living experiencers with enduring consciousnesses time would not exist" (Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering, James L. Christian, p. 506).
Rather than framing time in terms of its reality or unreality, the Bible offers this inspired view in what almost seems like a riddle: "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past" (Eccl. 3:15). This is a description of time as eternal. When Jesus arrived, he demonstrated that an understanding of this can break the hammerlocks of time. One moment, he was on one side of the sea, and the next, he was on the other side (see John 6:19-21). Moses and Elias lived hundreds of years before Jesus, yet he met and talked with them (see Matt. 17:1-3). When Jesus was told that his friend Lazarus was deathly ill, he didn't rush to his side. By the time he got to Lazarus, he had been dead for four days, yet Jesus quickly restored him to a normal life (see John 11:1-44).
