What is Time?

Have you ever wondered…what God was doing before He created the earth? Or, leaving God out of the equation, what was happening a million years before the earth formed, and a million years before that…and before that…going backwards through eternity? Surely, there would be no beginning, just as is there is not end to eternity. And that baffles to the mind to the point of shutting down. In this article, I’ll try to demystify the mystery of time.

The simple answer is that “time” does not exist. The concept of time is a human construct. It was given to us by God to organize or lives so that our events don’t overlap. Certainly, you wouldn’t plan a meeting at 3:00 PM and a basketball game at the same time! For humans, time is a tool. But time really doesn’t exist. It’s an abstract concept, not a concrete one. If all humans were to die tomorrow, there would be no “time” because no one would be there to think about it or make it up.

As humans, we’re only able to measure times because we have a limited time on earth. Our bodies are programmed to fail. But think about the sun. What if the sun could think. Would time exist for the sun? What use does the sun have for time when it is just existing merrily with no worries of what “tomorrow” would bring. And since we measure time against the sun, how would the sun measure time if it had a consciousness.

Imagine if you were a stationary being fixed at one location, existing in perfect ecstasy, observing the universe from that fixed position, never aging, never dying. For you, there is no such thing as time. You would watch flowers die and new ones bloom. You would see trees grow old and die, but you wouldn’t care to match a time to it. Day in and day out would be the same time. There would be no “before” and “after” because you’ll see life as cyclical.

And that’s the key to demystify the mystery of time. Understanding, that, like everything else in life, it is cyclical. We are able to declare a year because the earth went “around” the sun one complete time. We are able to declare a day because the earth “rotated” on its axis once. These are both cyclical motions. Think of a river flowing to the ocean. A limited observer would wonder what happens to the waters of the ocean eventually. Does it keep flowing and flowing and flowing…? And what happens after it flows to 1000 miles…and then another 1000 miles…and so on to eternity. And that same limited observer wonders where the water it is coming from, and what exists 1000 miles before it. He doesn’t realize that that water flows into the sea, evaporates as vapor, condenses as rain, falls back on the mountaintop…and the cycle continues.

In the same way, our limited minds cause us to see time as concrete and linear…moving infinitely backward and forward…from eternity to eternity. The truth is, time doesn’t exist. Life exists. It has always existed, and it will always exist. It will always be throwing itself in and out of form, whether our limited minds are there to observe it or not.