On life, Time and eternity
A character in Luis Herrera’s “Lucas Black: a novel” discovers that the human reference of a thing we call Time is vastly different and possibly totally irrelevant in eternity.
Narrating this work has rekindled my own theory about how time and eternity are related, if they are at all related. There is no hard basis for my conclusion. Your guess is as good as mine. But taking an idea or two from here and there, this is what I have come up with.
I believe that Time is merely a concept we primarily use when counting trips around our tiny sun in our much tinier spaceship we call Earth. We multiply these into decades, centuries, millennia, pre-historic eons, etc. We also break these down into days, hours, minutes, seconds and then micro-seconds of the seemingly most insignificant (at least to the non-scientific world). All of this to denote something we did or have yet to do and to enhance the relevance of these events, ‘when,’ a reference to an occurrence or existence at some point in the universe.
A shared point of most faiths is that God is eternal; never had a beginning and will always be. As a youngster, I remember actually being cautioned not to ponder this concept too deeply as it just might 'put me in a trance' or something. It is a heady thought after all. Everything we're familiar with in its present form had a beginning and will have an end. My Christian faith also tells me that God knew and loved each of us even before birth and that He intends for us to reside with him eternally in Heaven.
Being that God, Heaven and our souls are eternal, what possible use could any of these have of Time? If time is not a thing but a concept, it wouldn't exist in an eternal realm and if there is no time line, then there's no past, no future, only an eternal ‘now.’ If that's the case, then all souls exist with God in the same manner that he does. Your relatives, friends, anyone that knows you in this life also knows you in eternity and 'knew you before' you were born. Perhaps all souls are acquainted in eternity, perhaps not. Regardless, I believe that when we leave this world, we again become aware of our eternal existence and place in Heaven.
“But my grandmother died in 1963,” you argue. “Hasn't she been waiting over half a century for me to join her in Heaven?” Although about fifty years has lapsed in this life, I would propose that if Heaven is eternal and there is no concept of time, then what is half a century in that realm? I believe it's nothing at all. I believe our souls are already there, never left when we were born, all occurring at the same instant and continuing in the same ‘now.’ When a loved one or good friend dies, I take consolation in the thought that a part of me is with them in another place, at this instant, just as it has been all along in the Eternal Now.
Talk about 'living in the moment,' which we're all encouraged to do here on Earth, that's all there will be in Heaven. An eternal moment with all of our needs met, if we have any, in complete adoration of God. You, myself, all of us are already there.
