Old Friends and the Course of Time ...

Wednesday, July 27, 2011. Yesterday I have visited a place where I have not been for two years. I arrived as I used to arrive … all was as it always used to be. I met the people I have been working with … and we just continued where we had interrupsed the last time I met them.

Time is flying? Time stands still …

Sometimes time seems to stand still. When I walked through that place yesterday, it was as if the two years since I left had not been there. Of course, a lot happened since then. One of my friends there has been away himself, he spend some time overseas. Then he came back and got a new position in the institute. Now it seems as if he had never been away.

We walked around yesterday, it was a graduation day, and many students were there with their parents, with black robes celebrating their master or PhD. The young men and women were dressed up, and the whole atmosphere was somewhere between joyful and excited. Tents had been put up and you could sit and listen to Jazz and other music. We sat down and continued our scientific discussion, we made plans as always … thinking about the next step in the development of our special field and about grant applications (what else to do today as an employee of a University ) …

I had to think about time when I drove back in the evening. How is time passing on? Sometimes you come somewhere, and all well-known people are gone. Only the buildings remain. Sometimes even the buildings are gone and everything is different. But then, there are those moments where time seems to rest.

God is above time … Eternity! …

Looking back to this experience yesterday, I thought: is that a glimpse into how eternity will look like? You do something for quite a while, something different, in a different place. Then, you come back, and it is all still there as it used to be? All people still live. They are the same, today as they were yesterday? The still hope, they still laugh, they still follow their exciting activities?

The New Testament promises eternity to those who believe in Jesus. It is a fantastic promise, it is a perspective far beyond the world as we know it. Details are not given, and it might be idle to speculate too much about how eternity will look like. The bible only speaks in images about it.

But the image I had yesterday somehow seems to capture an important element of eternity. You come back, and everything ist still there, friendly as always, supportive and well-set. Things have moved forward, it is life, not death. But it is sustainable life, which gives a future to everyone! ... more texts