I’m getting older. And so are you. And I have a theory: The older I get; the faster time goes. Call it a hunch or a sneaking suspicion. I’m not suggesting it’s related to the theory of relativity or grounded in a study from Harvard Medical School. Instead, I’ll attempt a less sophisticated explanation of the speed of life. Here’s how I picture it: When the ball reaches the top of the roof and begins rolling down the other side, it picks up speed. Like that ball, life goes faster and faster. Time flies.
Dr. Suess said it as only he could, “How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
Because time seems to accelerate in proportion to our age, we make pronouncements like, “Seems like only yesterday,” and “No way it’s been 10 years,” and “He looks old and tired.” Life travels beside us and through us at warp speed. Naturally, it’s easy to be caught off guard.
But if this is an age-old phenomenon, we may also be experiencing other factors that make us feel as if time is moving faster. On the website, The Conversation, Richard Correia notes that,
“Indeed, an increasing number of people report constantly feeling short of time. Such feelings of ‘time scarcity’ emerge from how time is both used and perceived by people. Long working hours inevitably limit the time that people have available for other activities, but leading fast-paced lifestyles while packed into noisy, dynamic and crowded urban environments is mentally exhausting, and this can also influence how we perceive time.”
Perhaps the promise of modern conveniences has backfired into a kind of obsession with productivity and speed. Technology guaranteed us more time but might actually be stealing our time. Can we even put down our phones for an hour? Our current pace of life could very well be eroding our souls.
Today we live by the clock. Our activities and our lives are measured in precise moments. We’re time obsessed. And this obsession leaks out in everyday conversations. We take time, make time, buy time, spend time, invest time, lose time, keep time, kill time, serve time, and we FaceTime. Time is our preoccupation. Clocks are on our phones, around our wrists, in our schools, in our cars, and on the wall near the restrooms in Walmart.
You would think with such precise timekeeping capabilities we would have equal mastery over our calendars. But it doesn’t seem to work that way. Before you know it, weeks pass, then months, then years. Then you wake up one day to find you’ve lived a lifetime. The Steve Miller Band affirmed life’s progression with plain-spoken accuracy, “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.”
Every year the calendar turns over once more, and we learn to write a fresh set of four digits that represent a new year—a year we’ve yet to live. And for me, the pace of that change can feel dizzying, the contents of the calendar, weightier than normal. Like Bilbo Baggins, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” And all the while, like you, I’m moving toward my destiny. It’s unavoidable.
In his book, Prophetic Untimeliness, Os Guinness reminds us that time and this life as we know it will eventually end and so, too, will we. He writes,
“Time isn’t impressed by honors, awards, or bank accounts. It isn’t fooled by cosmetics and plastic surgery, or even by exercise. The sickle keeps sweeping closer. The sands in the hourglass are fewer by the second. One day the bell will toll for each of us. And that is when our views of time and life will matter, for their truth or falsehood will make the difference in that day.”
Time is the great equalizer; no one has more than twenty-four hours in every day. And no one escapes this earthly sojourn alive. But God exists outside of time. He’s not constrained by the boundaries of time. He suffers none of the consequences of time. He has no beginning or end. Eternity for God stretches in both directions—past and future.
In Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry offers some unique insights about being carried along in time. He writes,
“Nearly everything that has happened to me has happened by surprise. All the important things have happened by surprise. And whatever has been happening usually has already happened before I have had time to expect it. The world doesn’t stop because you are in love or in mourning or in need of time to think. And so when I thought I was in my story or in charge of it, I really have been only on the edge of it, carried along. Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?”
Don’t miss Berry’s insightful question, “Is this because we are in an eternal story that is happening partly in time?” The answer to his question is, yes! Yes, we’re living in time but we’re part of a bigger story—an eternal one. And time is temporary while eternity is forever.
Reach back to the seventeenth century and you’ll hear Francois Fenelon remind us, “How you spend your time changes with the different seasons of your life, but one principle applies to every moment of time: Don’t waste it.” We’ve all known the experience of wasted time. The lingering discouragement of prodigal defeat may leave us wondering if we can ever redeem the time.
But the investment of our lives in time is not unreasonable or unrealistic. God is with us, helping us. And I would add that God has given us enough time in every day to do everything He wants us to do.
Time is fleeting, its movement unstoppable. Can we survive the onslaught of noise and activity and the lunacy of the pace? Yes we can, but only if we resist the temptation to maximize or control time. Instead, we should remind ourselves that we inhabit an eternal story, so no wonder our experience of time always feels a bit strange.
And whatever restlessness we feel may be a reminder of an eternal longing. The great Christian writer and thinker, C.S. Lewis, helps us see beyond time when he writes, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
God invites us to experience life in a timeless eternity. Real life. A life found only in Jesus. Life with Him forever. In the meantime, we should pay careful attention to the Psalmist’s resolve and make it our own, “So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
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