It Was 60 Years Ago Today . . . .

That SGT Peppers taught the band to play? Nah. It was 60 years ago today that I was born! I don’t mention that to bring attention to myself or my birthday, which as my family will tell you, I am loathe to do (the birthday part), but to muse on the strangeness of the passage of time. The older I get, the stranger it becomes. Time itself is a conundrum. We all know what it is, until we’re asked to explain it. For a portion of our lives we take it for granted, and don’t think much of it at all, other than to complain that certain things take waaaaaaay too long. Then something happens along the way, for me after I hit mile-marker 40. Time which never changes its actual pace, seemed to speed up. I remember attending a seminar in my 30s where the speaker said something about five years, and that for the youngsters in the audience that may seem like a long time. I remember thinking, five years is a long time. Oh, but it’s not, at all, as you oldsters know. And speaking of oldsters, isn’t it funny how everyone complains about getting old, but nobody wants to die?

I’ll never forget when I graduated from college, all of 22 years old, going to my first job and being introduced around. I came to an older gentleman who looked at me with disdain, and sneered, “How old are you?” When I said 22, he growled, “That’s disgusting!” Allrighty then. I kinda know how he feels at this point, although I don’t think youth is disgusting, only that it’s a shame it’s wasted on the young. When I was young I remember older people telling me, not that I cared, how fast time flies, you can’t believe it, enjoy youth while you have it, bla, bla, bla. That’s exactly what I thought it was, bla. Sure, I get it. Then as I started getting older, and my kids as well, I started sounding like an old person telling them how fast time flies, bla, bla, bla. In a priceless moment with our youngest, who is now somehow 18, as I was going bla, bla, bla, I blurted out, “There is no way you can relate to what I’m saying!” He logically replied, “Then why do you keep telling me!” Because that’s what old people do! We’re incredulous. This can’t really happen to us. Right? Oh it can. And it does; relentlessly. We’re rotting right before our very eyes, and we don’t like it, not one bit! Not least the little, or not so little, aches and pains. I’ll never forgot a time, arrogant in my ignorant youth, having dinner with my mother-in-law and some friends of hers. One elderly woman was complaining about the travails of aging in an especially bitter way, and I told my wife, She’s so “negative.” Maybe, but now I understand.

Looked at from an existential perspective, the passage of time can only be looked at one of two ways. Either it is a cruel joke, one that mocks us as the frightening pace of the the second law of thermodynamics takes its toll on our bodies, or it is a cause for humility that drives us to look to our Creator to ultimately save us from its ravages. If there is no God revealed to us in Jesus Christ in his death on the cross, and resurrection from the dead, the former is the best we got, if the testimony of Scripture is true, the joke will ultimately be on time. Every day wondering which it really is, I look outside to God’s revelation in creation, which drives me to God’s revelation in Scripture, which drives me to God’s ultimate revelation in Christ. I’ll stand with the Apostle Paul who declares in Romans 8:

²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.