Jim's Primeval Journey: Time

I enjoy mental rest stops: naps, sitting on the back steps at dusk, mellow jazz, the minutes between going to bed and falling asleep. I also enjoy mental adventures: day-dreaming, getting engrossed in a novel, planning a real adventure, when the minutes before falling asleep stretch on a while because my mind is working.

The category of mental adventure that I find the most pleasing is “the freak-out.” Some of my freak-outs are: finding something I forgot I owned, remembering an experience long forgotten and immediately re-living the feelings, having an important insight fall into place during one of those before-falling-asleep times. And suddenly I’m freaking out (def: brain explosion precipitated by extreme profundity and/or coolness and/or scariness).

Some of my favorite freak-outs are related to “time.” The following is a list of some of my time-related freak-outs. (1) We all get it at the same rate – a minute at a time, a year at a time. (2) The rich don’t get more time than the poor. (3) This minute right now is being spent by me here and now, while everyone else is spending this same minute doing their own thing in their own place. (4) Nobody gets to save up and hoard time – you use it or waste it as soon as it is doled out. (5) Nobody gets to scoot ahead of the rest of us for a preview of the future.

I usually have a time related freak-out when something big is coming up. I’m waiting, waiting, waiting…then BOOM – it’s happening RIGHT NOW – then…wow, it happened…back then. Anticipating, experiencing, and remembering. Courtesy of the inexorable passing of time.

Here is the Primeval Narrative on the topic of time: “Then the LORD said: ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years’” (Gen 6:3). God says he will cap our lifespan at 120 years, which is pretty much the extreme upper limit of human life until you read Genesis 5 in which Methuselah wins the longevity award at 969 years. We ask “why would the author make up such crazy long ages?” but the ancients asked “why do we get gypped with a lousy 120 years?”

I’m with the ancients on this, especially when I remember my own primeval (“earliest years”) mindset on the human lifespan. When I was a kid, it felt like it would take 900 years to grow up. Time moved so slowly. Vacation was luxuriously long and the school year agonizingly long. It was an eternity between Christmases when I had only experienced about 8 of them. And I specifically remember calculating how old I would be in the year 2000. I’d be 42. I was sure it would take about 969 years to ever get that old.

Time flew. Wow, did it ever. And now in all likelihood I’m over half way to the grave, and I’m shouting with the ancients: “how about another couple centuries, Lord!”

I know eternity awaits. But the few years on this side of eternity are supposed to make a difference—both now and in eternity.

Time…eternity…I’m freaking out over here.