Time and Beyond Time

A few weeks ago one of my children asked me a great question about God and time and if something or other were possible, and I wish for the life of me that I could remember what the questions was.

The idea of time and being outside of and transcending the time/space continuum is an idea that really captures my imagination. That's one reason I loved that new Star Trek movie (though I've never been a Trekky).

Anyways, this question, (whatever it was) brought this passage of Lewis to mind. It's one that's stuck in my mind since I first read Mere Christianity some 10 years ago (particularly the crashing plane example:

Almost certainly God is not in time. His life does not consist of moments following one another. If a million people are praying to Him at ten-thirty tonight, He need not listen to them all in that one little snippet which we call ten-thirty. Ten-thirty and every other moment from the beginning of the world —is always the Present for Him. If you like to put it that way, He has all eternity in which to listen to the split second of prayer put up by a pilot as his plane crashes in flames.

That is difficult, I know. Let me try to give something, not the same, but a bit like it. Suppose I am writing a novel. I write "Mary laid down her work; next moment came a knock at the door!" For Mary who has to live in the imaginary time of my story there is no interval between putting down the work and hearing the knock. But I, who am Mary's maker, do not live in that imaginary time at all. Between writing the first half of that sentence and the second, I might sit down for three hours and think steadily about Mary. I could think about Mary as if she were the only character in the book and for as long as I pleased, and the hours I spent in doing so would not appear in Mary's time (the time inside the story) at all.

This is not a perfect illustration of course. But it may give just a glimpse of what I believe to be the truth. God is not hurried along in the time-stream of this universe any more than an author is hurried along in the imaginary time of his own novel. He has infinite attention to spare for each one of us. He does not have to deal with us in the mass. You are as much alone with Him as if you were the only being He had ever created. When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the word.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity (from the chapter "Time and Beyond Time")