Racing Toward Eternity

Time is shortening. I have sensed it for years, but it has become undeniable. I don’t know how to explain this phenomenon. Maybe something is happening with the rotation of the earth or its orbit around the sun. But time seems to be speeding up and compressing.

When I was a child, school days seemed as long as a week. Every week seemed to last as long as a month. Birthdays, Christmas, and the 4th of July all came around once a decade. Even as a young man, time seemed to take its time. When I was courting Kirstie, we lived a few hours apart. We might talk on the phone once or twice a week, and we would see each other on the weekends, but not every weekend. We got engaged after dating for a little over seven months. We were married less than fifteen months after we met, but I assure you that courtship and engagement took forever. Men began a career, worked at it for decades, and retired with a gold watch in the time it took for me to first convince Kirstie to go out with me until I finally put a wedding band on her finger.

As a young minister, inexperienced husband, and new father, time crept along at a snail’s pace. Each of Kirstie’s pregnancies lasted at least eighteen months. In the first two churches I served, I spent hours, literally hours, on multiple days, every week, reading the Bible aloud and memorizing vast portions of it. This was in addition to preparing two sermons every week, Sunday School and Wednesday night lessons, teaching seven to twelve other Bible studies for evangelism and discipleship, and doing regular visitation. Every week seemed to last a month, and I got a lot done, a lot.

During the last twelve years in Arizona, I have noticed time accelerating. Days are only a few hours long, weeks are just a few days. The only thing that still seems to drag on are sleepless nights; everywhere else time is moving at lightspeed. Maybe I’m simply getting older. Maybe it is because my kids are mostly grown. Maybe it is the size and workload associated with a larger congregation. I think digital media, the tyranny of texting and email, and the ubiquity of online connectivity has something to do with it as well. The Internet has not made us more efficient. It has simply given us more to do in less time along with greater distraction than we ever had before.

This is not how human beings were meant to live. Men in earlier generations worked hard, they put in long hours and strained their bodies every day, week after week, for decades. But they did not try to do a dozen things at once. They did not have six different conversations simultaneously via text and email. They were not available at all times for any thing that might come along. When they went out to plant a field, brand a steer, or milk the cows every morning, they had to focus on what they were doing. If they worked in a factory, in a store, or at a desk, they went away to do it, and while they were there, that was the only thing they did. If you needed them, you could call their house on a landline, and they would get back to you, eventually, which might be later that evening, though the day seemed to be a week long.

Time saving devices, productivity plans, and online connection may have made us more efficient in certain ways, but they have not made us more effective human beings. People are more distracted, distressed, and depressed than ever before, and your smartphone, social media accounts, and screen time are not the solution. They are a large part of the problem.

We are racing toward eternity. The first thirty years of my life lasted a century. The last third of my life has gone by in the blink of an eye. Your life is but a vapor that soon vanishes away… so teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. The Bible teaches us to remember both our mortality and our Creator. Very little of the busyness that occupies and troubles us each day will matter when we stand before the Lord on the last day.

It is possible that time will slow down again. Maybe when I am old and my children are gone. Maybe in long, lonely stretches when I am no longer an “important person,” no longer useful, no longer sought after by so many all the time. Maybe then time will resume its proper pace and days will last weeks, weeks will last months, and years will last a decade. Or maybe my life will end before then. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. The question is what we will do with the hours we have today, each day, no matter how fleeting those hours may seem to be.

The Lord is calling his people to rest in him, to devote our lives to worshiping and serving him. Every Lord’s Day he draws us up and into the eternal rest that is ours in Christ. That is our eternal destiny, the end toward which we have been moving all our lives. We were made to worship, made by God, for God, to be like God and to enjoy him forever. There may be many other things distracting and dominating you each day, but there is nothing more important than union and communion with God. You were made for this. Our daily busyness will, eventually, disappear—much of it will burn—but the one who does the will of God will abide forever.