Musing on God and Time

I have been thinking for weeks about time and how it relates to God.  These days I am wondering now if along with the rest of the universe around us, God created time.

We are so time-bound, and universe-bound that it is hard to think outside of those particular boxes.  But what if time did not exist until God set in motion the universe we know? What if at creation He created time, along with matter, light, gravity, etc. as part of the suite of essential mechanisms that undergird this universe?  What if He lives outside of time?

To continue this line of speculation, perhaps He sees into what we consider the distant past as easily as He sees the present or what will be for us the distant future.  If this is so, then He knows how our lives play out, and the words we will speak, and the deeds we will do.  If He is not bound by time, my past, present and future are all visible at once to Him.

If that is so, He knew from the beginning of time that I would choose to love Him, and so perhaps he arranged my destiny to assure that I would be in a position to make that choice.  Maybe the opposite understandings of "predestination" and "free will" are both right.....or maybe we (including myself in this short essay) have tried to use logic to understand God's ways when logic is insufficient to resolve these questions.

Once I no longer see God as bound by time, some of the assumptions I have made about how God acts in our universe come loose of their moorings.  I believe the Bible to be a reliable message, but I also believe it neither contains all of God nor all of the universe.  Perhaps some of the apparent contradictions we see, or some of our contentious interpretations of the Bible are due to our time-limited understanding.

The Bible contains some fascinating hints on this subject.  Here are just two:

• He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Eccl 3:11b NIV
• to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Jude 1:25 ESV (emphasis added)

We once had a cat named Cissy.  She had marvelous china blue eyes.  Sometimes those china blue eyes seemed to look at me with questions her cat nature would not allow her to even frame, let alone ask.  I feel that way sometimes about God.

But I know He loves us.  I am content to abide in that knowledge.  The other answers I can wait for.

What do you think?  Has time always existed?  Does God exist outside of time?  Let me know what you think: click the "comments" link below and leave your thoughts.