The Redemption of Time

So time.  Time is a strange phenomenon.  It is one of the most bizarre things for me to think about.  Understanding God in the context of time is so far beyond my little brain that it gives me a massive headache, but I still try, probably in vain.  

I am always fighting time.  It either goes way too slowly or way too quickly.  Everything that we experience is measured within the framework of time.  I want out.  Time seems to be a prison. Aging is the strangest phenomenon.  We are constantly fighting aging, but it is obviously a losing battle.  Birthdays are one step closer to death days.  How do I stay in the present moment, as it is constantly leaving me behind, or I am leaving it behind?  I celebrate Lily’s milestones as she grows up. Each month, we take pictures, capturing her development and growth.  She will never ever be this age again.  She will never be this little again.  She will never again roll over for the first time, take her first bites of real food, smile for the first time, have her first giggle, discover her fingers and toes, and she will only have one first step.  When moments are wonderful, we want to freeze them.  But they expire.  I often feel like time is an enemy.

We fight time with photography. We carry reflections of past moments with us into the present through these images that give us visual representations of things that we don’t want to forget. We fight time through writing.  We use words as snapshots to look back on, so that we won’t forget. My feeble attempts to thwart it are pathetically laughable.

Chronos, you are so frustrating!  I feel like I am missing something, like there is some key to experience that I have yet to find.  There is a deep desire to be outside of time, to move freely, without limitations.  Maybe I am alone, but time travel sometimes sure seems desirable, not necessarily to go back and change things, or to know what is in the future, but simply to be without restriction.   But God created time, so there must be something redemptive about it.  God wouldn’t create something intrinsically evil, would He?  Time existed before the fall, so it is not the result of a fallen world.  He created day and night in a yet sin-free creation.  This is before death.  

Maybe death is the ultimate time-destroyer.  So could time be liberated if death were absent?  Is this Kairos? Untainted time?  Surely God had a reason for creating such a thing as day, and such a thing as night, and seconds, and moments, and hours.  So is the key to outsmarting time really about fighting aging and capturing moments on film or paper?  Or is it understanding the power of Christ outsmarting death?  Death is what destroys time for us.  

Is Kairos about understanding resurrection power?  How can we really practice “mindfulness” or staying in the present moment with the looming whispers of death all around us?  Is it in the understanding that death has no power and that life has already won?  Is it found in the knowledge that time has been redeemed, bought back, by the life that destroys death?  These are only ponderings.  They may be utterly off-base, but in a world where it seems that time travel has yet to be discovered, at least by myself, this awareness of resurrection power makes time more bearable, and possibly beautiful.