“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”  Albert Einstein

Einstein’s theory of General Relativity describes a phenomenon of time dilation in which the flow of time is directly affected by the amount of gravitational force to which it is exposed.  Where the force of gravity is stronger, near the center, the flow of time slows.  As the force of gravity weakens the further one moves from the center, the flow of time accelerates.    Experiments on earth, using extremely accurate and sensitive instruments, have shown that time passes one-billionth of a second slower at sea level than it does on the top of Mt. Everest. Because the gravitational pull of a black hole is so extreme, it’s affect on the flow of time is also extreme. The theory states that time would move so slowly for objects near the black hole that they would appear to be frozen in time to an observer far away from the black hole. If we were able to survive a fall into a black hole, time would seem to flow “normally” for us, but the universe would age infinitely for those observing us from earth.  

Now I am no physicist, but time is strange and definitely beyond my comprehension.   The Bible even talks about this.  

For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. Psalm 90:4

A few months ago, the kids and I were doing a devotional that referenced this verse.   “How can a thousand years be the same as a day?” they asked.  

I know that the author of this Psalm was poetically describing how God is above and beyond our concept of time.  I believe he was describing eternity as it compares to our meager concept of time passing. In this single verse and in its context, I believe the author was saying that to God, who created the galaxies and who is from everlasting to everlasting, the time that we use to measure one rotation of earth on its axis or one revolution of the earth around the sun is insignificant.  

Eternity is a difficult concept for adults to grasp, let alone for kids in first and fourth grades, so we pretended for a minute that the author was giving us an exact rate of time comparison between God and ourselves.  

We know that one human year is 365 days.  If we would have to live 1000 human years for God to live just one day, then for every 365,000 human days we live, God experiences one eternal day.  

Then we figured that many people live until they are 80 years old.  We calculated using our rate that 80 human years would only be 2/25^thof a day, or just under 2 hours for God. So God witnesses the birth, life, and death of the average human in about 2 eternal hours. 

Harper asked how long Henry had been with God using this rate.  At the time, we had just observed the 2^nd anniversary of Henry’s death, so we calculated that 2 human years is roughly 1/500^th of a day for God which is about 2 minutes and 53 seconds.  Henry had been in Heaven for only about 3 minutes of his eternity there. 

Even though we knew we were not really labeling how time passes, if it even does, for God, figuring out these rates opened all of our eyes to the eternal nature of God. Knowing that our souls are eternal as well, it helped us see that whatever we are going through on earth, whatever pain, or fear, or struggle, or whatever success we are stressing to achieve, it is just a wink in the light of eternity.  It is extremely temporary.  It is similar to the perspective we might have over the Mayfly, whose lifespan is 24 hours.  We can see the birth, life, and death of these creatures in just one of our days. Their life might feel like 80 years to them, but we see the extremely temporary nature of their time on earth.  

After the kids moved on to their school work, I calculated one more hypothetical.  If I lived to the age of my grandmother, I would live another 44 years.  Forty-four years is just over an hour to God.  

With this perspective, time takes on another shape.  Maybe my life feels long when I consider living the rest of it without Henry, or whatever other pain may be on my path, but maybe it is just temporary.  

I like it.  I like picturing Henry in Heaven for an hour or two, along with all the others I can’t wait to see.  I can picture him turning around upon my arrival and saying, “Mom, I’m so glad you’re here!  You are just in time.”

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11