This month we ushered in a new year, 2020. We say Happy New Year to another year as we say goodbye to the previous one.
A year is a way of marking time. But what is time? This question continues to be pondered in religion, philosophy, and science.
I'm not sure any of us completely understand time.
In human life on Earth, we normally mark time by birth and death. Our physical human bodies clearly mark time this way.
But I have often wondered about time before my birth and after my death. I guess I have difficulty restricting my existence to only the time between when I was born and when I die.
There is a poetic and thought-provoking passage in the Bible that stirs my imagination about the time before we are born. In Psalm 139, verses 14-16, we read: "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed."
And when it comes to the point after death, my curiosity is peaked by the following verse in the Bible: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known" (1 Corinthians 13:12).
As another year has sped past like the speed of light, and we embark on the year 2020, I'm resistant to think only in terms of the Gregorian calendar that our society uses to mark time. I'd rather think of us as time travelers, or perhaps even better, timeless beings of God.
I don't have all the answers to those mysteries, but I sure enjoy exploring them with anyone who would like to travel with me through time.
