REFLECTIONS

A Puzzlement

A vintage clock sits on the mantle in our family room. Family records show that it has been in the family since 1856; and it still runs! If it could talk, there would be lots of secrets to reveal about the generations it has seen; but there are some secrets to know about it too. To make it strike the hours properly, there is a winding technique that not many in our family know about. If not wound correctly, the clock will still keep good time, but it will not chime at the hours of six and eight. But when wound by its secret formula, it runs like a top and strikes the hours as accurately as any modern timepiece.

We depend on the clock every day. We depend on its chimes to tell us when the day begins; and we glance at it each time we pass through the room to measure where we stand with the daily schedules. Time-keeping devices help us manage our days, but time is a curious thing. Solomon writes about it. “There is a time for everything,” he writes. But his references are to spans of time, or seasons of life. God made the seasons, but He also created chronological time. Each day, the sun’s encouraging glow awakens us, drifts across the sky, and then sets, yielding to darkness that brings restful quiet to the earth before the sun awakens again to repeat the process once more. This daily cycle establishes time that we measure in 24 sixty-minute segments.

Our lives on earth are both managed and measured by chronological time. But time is unique to God’s creation. Time in God’s heavenly home has neither seasons nor chronological sequences. Time with God is eternal—time without measure.

Life without time as its measure is incomprehensible to me. In earthly life we recall the past, plan for the future, and live in the present. But in heaven the past, future and present all become one. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis observed, “For the present is the point at which time touches eternity.” The King of Siam from the King and I might describe that statement as, “a puzzlement.” And it does pose a concept to ponder.

Eternal life sounds like an inexhaustible sequence of days, more days than any clock could withstand. But there will be no need for our vintage clock in heaven and its winding formula and durability have nothing to do with its uselessness there. Clocks won’t work in heaven. There is no time to measure. In heaven the only time is I AM. But will “Now” span every yesterday that ever was and every tomorrow that will ever be?

For me that question is a puzzlement.

You are the light of the world,

Richard +

www.reflectingthesavior.org

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