The correct time depends on where you are. Or perhaps, it depends on who you are.
In the ongoing debate between science and faith, humanity struggles to understand the mechanics of our existence. Science has successfully dissected much of the mystery of our universe and the physics that allows it to exist. Researchers continue to advance their understanding of chemistry, biology, astronomy, and other sciences. Much of this research has resulted in life-saving knowledge that contributes to human lifespan and quality of life.
There is, however, one element of our existence that God seems to keep the secret to Himself.
Time.
Our science and engineering have enabled us to overcome and manipulate many of the forces of nature that define our world. All we have been able to do with time, however, is measure it and find ways to define it.
Somewhere in human history, we determined the time it takes for the earth to circle the sun and for the seasons to cycle. Eventually, we divided it into 12 months, each of which was comprised of approximately 30 days.
We divided each day into 24 segments we label as hours, and each hour into 60 minutes and each minute subdivided into 60 seconds. With modern technology, we can further divide each second into smaller segments.
When we apply our science to estimating the age of the earth and the evolution of life forms, we start to imagine amounts of time that vastly surpass any human experience. At that point, we begin to substitute mathematics for human experience. We then use mathematics to describe interstellar distances in terms of time to move through that distance at the speed of light.
Looking at our home planet, we estimate how much time was needed to form our world and begin the process of transforming it into the world we know.
As we embrace the concepts of planetary formation and the vast distances light travels through our universe, we come to realize that the elements of time that we know are infinitesimally small in comparison. If we think of time as a tool of God’s creative efforts, we can begin to see that human existence is barely a tick of the clock on God’s time scale.
Armed with that understanding, we may be able to understand why it seems that God does not respond to prayers or act to right what we perceive to be wrongs. If God can spend eons creating the universe we see and the world we inhabit, a single human lifespan is less than a tick of the clock, and any human suffering is even less. If human existence continues indefinitely after physical death, then our moment of suffering may be but a blink of an eye.
The passage of time as we know it is one-way only. There’s no backing up.
Perhaps God can manipulate time. Perhaps He can take us back and right those wrongs and heal those moments of suffering.
After all, He has all the time He needs.