My son once asked me, “Dad, what is time?” After a long pause, I responded, “I don’t know. It’s a perennial question of philosophers, theologians, and other thoughtful people. But, so far as I can tell, time is what we have.”

Some people think that time isn’t real, that it’s a human construct and only eternity is real. They think of time as the prison of the soul, the prelude to eternal life.

That always seemed a bit strange to me. Like the imaginary friends that children make up when they’re afraid of being alone in the dark. I could never understand. The animals know what time is. They also experience eternity. They wake and sleep to the rhythm of sunrise and sunset that marks what we call time. They know nothing about clock time or the names of days, months, seasons or years, but they live in the reality of time.

Time is what we have between birth and death. Eternity is the depth of time, the Mystery beneath, within, and beyond the limits of time. We participate in the eternal, but we are not eternal.

The illusion of superiority to the web of nature — the idea that the human species is nature’s singular exception – is a fabrication peculiar to the species that considers itself conscious. The imaginary friend of eternal life may help us sleep better at night, but it leads to slaughter and, eventually, to species suicide.

Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death) saw the denial of death as bedrock to American culture.
The denial of death — the refusal to acknowledge death as real; the flight from the gnawing sense of our mortality – not only deprecates life here and now; it takes into its hands the life and death of those different from ourselves. It builds towers to itself that reach toward the heavens while it plunders an earth it considers too lowly for its lofty aspirations.

Time is our friend and time is our limit. We are meant for this. “Grace and pride
never lived in the same place,” says an old Scottish proverb, for pride always seeks to exceed what is given (grace).

Time is what we have. Time is mortal participation in the glory of God. If there’s more, it will only by grace.

Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian “Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness” (2017 Wipf and Stock, Brooklyn Park, MN, January 1, 2024