The liturgy contains a prayer that includes this thought-provoking line: “Time is the gradual unveiling of truth that already is.”
Interesting thought, isn’t it? It says much about the limitations under which we live on this earth, especially in relation to God, who transcends our temporal world. Therefore, whereas we are bound by time and tenses in our ability to understand reality, we can nevertheless see that our omnipotent God is not bound by the same understandings.
So we “wait” for Sacred History to “play out.” God does not. For God, is there any time duration between the incarnation and the second coming?
Now here’s an interesting parallel: God created time. We accept time as our “only” reality. Just the way that God’s Church created the Bible. And some will accept only that creation as the sole revelation, and so try to constrain the creator to his creation.
We are accustomed to thinking of eternity as time without end. But I believe it to be the absence of time. This is a radical difference. Consider this example: Over a man’s 80-year lifespan, he gradually acquires certain knowledge. Now what if all of that knowledge could be infused into that man’s mind in one instantaneous burst of enlightenment?
Consider an ant crawling across a frescoed ceiling. What reality is the ant aware of? Maybe he thinks, “Well, for about six hours I had to walk across this ugly gray terrain, but now I have crossed into more pleasant blue pastel surroundings. Maybe by tomorrow I will find myself in a stretch of orange or red. Wouldn’t that be nice.”
Such are we, traversing earthly life from birth to death. What are our observations? Does our experience of life have any meaning? Is there meaning that is greater than our experience of it?
Now somewhere along the line, the ant loses his footing and falls to the floor. He looks up, and sees his whole life experience – not as a prolonged, durational reality, but in one instantaneous burst. What is his experience now? The notion of “time” has been removed.
Similarly, what we perceive of God is limited by our inherent time-dependency. We perceive salvation history as something stretched out over centuries, even ages: we regard the fall of man as an ancient historical event; the incarnation as God’s “timely” response to it; and the final resurrection as something “out there” in a time yet-to-come.
But is this the way that God experiences the same reality? Is there any “duration” to salvation history in the experience of God, who is not bound by time? We will see the entire fresco, in one glimpse, at the moment of death when we enter the timelessness of eternity.
I think we ought to be thankful that we currently live in time – because it allows us to grow, to reflect, to learn, to repent of our self-centered choices. For in the absence of time, such might not be possible, and our own choices might likely be eternally irrevocable.
Perhaps our living in time is therefore a great mercy given us by God – in spite of the fact that time necessarily entails the pain of confusion, suffering, and death that often makes us question God’s goodness.
