Vita Brevis

I have christened my blog Vita Brevis and it means Life is Short in Latin. Indeed, the Holy Bible tells us in the Epistle of James, chapter four verse fourteen that:

"Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

Time is finite and though I do not comprehend all the scientific and mathematical implications of Time, I do understand its transience. It is fleeting and elusive. It slips out of your grasp like water, like sand, like air.

I was reading an article this afternoon and its author was Joe Boot, the executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) in Canada. It was in the Spring/Summer 2005 edition of the Triannual Communiqué of RZIM. I will like to share what Joe Boot wrote as well as some of my own contemplations.

Time is an enigma. However there are scientists and philosophers who believe (as in fact, Scripture teaches) that the space-time universe came into being in the finite past at the moment of creation. This whole field of study is still today a matter of great controversy. What is time and what is its relationship to eternity? What is the infinite and what relationship does it sustain to the finite? These questions have shown themselves thus far to be insoluble for the finite mind of human beings.

Indeed, this is what the wisdom literature of the Christian Scriptures leads us to expect because we are dealing with the mysteries that belong to the LORD. The infinite, transcendent creator God of the Holy Bible is beyond mortal intellection. Look at the Book of Ecclesiastes, chapter three verse eleven:

"He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end."

The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us of the existential reality of passing moments. These moments come to us all. We have all been born and will one day die. And death is labelled as the "trauma of transience" by Alister McGrath. Nobody can escape death, but yet as an illustration in God's Truth Made Simple by Mrs Paul Friederichsen depicted, death is not a dead end!

On average, the following occurs within the unit of measurement we call "second":
1. 4.5 cars are manufactured
2. 2000 metres of forest is wiped out
3. 3 people are born
4. 1.5 people die
5. 12.6 million cubic metres of water fall as precipitation (3.2 million of that fall on dry land)
6. 2.4 million red blood cells are produced in our bone marrow
7. 4 billion impulses are exchanged between the cortical hemispheres in our brain

Saint Augustine once commented, "What is time? If no one asks me I know; but if any person should require me to tell him, I cannot." I deem myself absolutely ignorant of Physics but I am informed that Time cannot be summed up with an equation while Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity has not brought the expected breakthrough. The Big Bang hypothesis, which, though popular, is fraught with mathematical problems solved by invoking hypothetical entities has no explanatory power to tell us how the space-time continuum could come into existence from nothing, by blind random processes. All the laws of our Physics are said to break down at the "quantum singularity".

Yet, the origin of time is deeply significant to us all because only as we come to understand its origin can we contemplate the meaning and purpose of Time and how we should use it. If all is random, irrational, and finally meaningless as some suppose, then we may just kill and waste time, for this is what time is doing to us.

From the observations of everyday life, in our "naïve" realism we notice that from nothing comes nothing and effects are not greater than their cause. If we apply this line of thought to our Universe and to Time, does it not suggest that all space-time reality was brought into existence by one who is outside time, that is, timeless?

Book of Genesis chapter one verse one says:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

This Scriptural quote has an alternative reading and according to Joe Boot, it says, "In the beginning was infinite information calling the space-time continuum into existence." Time on this basis is not an eternal cycle; it has a beginning, and it will have an end. The same is true of this world that we live in. Things are running down; we call this principle "entropy". Yet at the same time the Creation around us reveals something of its incredible Designer: the intricacy, beauty, order, complexity, and diversity of life.

The New International Version of God's Word puts it very well indeed - Gospel of Saint Matthew, chapter six verse twenty seven:

"Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"

We cannot extend the time we have but we can use it foolishly or wisely. Jesus Christ taught that we can invest our time in eternity (where Time has no meaning).

Time and tide waits for no man. Much of our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time that we rush through our lives trying to save. And when we soberly look at the question of time, our lack of it is foremost in our thoughts.

Time is a gift from God. Two implications apply:
1. Our Time has real significance and meaning despite physical death
2. Time has a new destination: eternity

When I was a Humanities student in Hwa Chong Junior College, one of the Advanced Levels English Literature texts was Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard. Rosencrantz had a hilarious line and it was "Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?" God is not bound by the space-time universe. He has made, so terms like "past"and "present" and "future" lose their meaning where God dwells. There is no "there" and "then" with God, only here and now. God is outside our time axis and sees the rolling ages at a single glance; Book of Revelations, chapter twenty two verse thirteen:

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last."

As Joe Boot mentioned in his article, "If God is indeed the Lord of all time, then it has a real unity of meaning. Time has a teleology, or goal in mind." Our time is endowed with real purpose because of the plan and will of the sovereign infinite God.

After all, preachers and theologians love to say History is His Story.