Time is a funny thing

My pastor and other bible teachers will tell  you that God created “time” for us. We require the ability to break it down into smaller, bite size chunks. Imagine for a moment what the world we be like without “time”. A chaotic mess would exist, don’t you think? And time is a funny thing too I think. Sometimes it drags, like on a Friday work day. Other times it flies by; most weekends for instance. Earlier this week I was driving down a road that I last traveled on a beautiful sunny day last fall. As I passed by the location where I spent several hours on that October Saturday morning before heading off to meet a dear friend for lunch I thought to myself–that was 3 months ago already–yet in some sense it seems as though it was just last week. How about that eerie de’ja vue experience? I know it happens to all of us, right?

I just completed an audio book by the masterful storyteller, Stephen King, titled 11/22/63. The entire book is focused around an ordinary guy who goes back in time through what he calls a “rabbit hole” to right the terrible wrong that occurred when JFK was assassinated. He discovers however that when you change that past a whole new future is created, seems obvious huh? As the narrator reads the tale aloud I found myself reeling at the changes in the world since 1960. At one point the protagonist’s girlfriend asks about the future and he responds by telling her that a black man is president. She is stunned. This is before desegregation so to hear that less than 50 years in the future a black man would hold the highest office in the country was amazing. And it is, don’t you think? Time is weird. In some ways we can look back across the half a century and be blown away by the speed of  progress yet when we look at the age of our now young adult children we can wonder…how did it go past so fast.