Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey

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 NIV)

Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.  That is the "Dr Who" phrase that has been going through my mind since Advent.  No, I'm not a Dr Who fan, but several of my family members are so it's really easy to pick up on the popular phrase.

We humans tend to see time as linear:  yesterday, today, tomorrow... seperate and solid and unmovable.  We think of eternity as an endless line of time.  But I think that is wrong.  I think eternity is not endless time, but is outside of time... we walk completely off and away from the line. It's hard to even imagine.  And I think that even that mortal line of yesterday, today and tomorrow is much more wibbly-wobbly than straight.

We begin to feel that wibbly-wobblyness when we worship with liturgy... All the saints, past, present and future coming together to praise God with "Holy, holy, holy..."

I wobble off the line a bit when a get a whiff of almond scent and the memory of my mom slathering Jergens Lotion on her hands is so real I can almost touch her.

I wibble into the future as I anticipate the birth of another grandchild and imagine what he or she will look and be like. I also wibble and wobble back and forth, past and present as I nurture my first grandchild, Cecelia, who reminds me so very much of me as a small child that I sometimes think I am nurturing myself as a child.

Many of us have watched loved ones with Alzheimer's wobble a little too far off the line and away from our grasp as we helplessly try to call them back.

Looking up at a starry night sky can draw you away from the line and absorb you into timelessness for as long as you wish to stay.

It's wibbly-wobbly to think of God, the great I Am, who was and is and is to come... The Alpha and Omega who knows our days to come and could be on earth as a man and yet still on His heavenly throne.

This wibbly-wobblyness also helps us understand some of the confusing timey-wimey things in the Bible:

Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah on the mountaintop.

The notion that we wait in our graves until Jesus calls us but Jesus telling the thief on the cross that he will be with him in paradise "this very day."

The idea that our loved ones are happy in heaven though they are parted from us. Perhaps they are not parted from us because since they have stepped outside of time, in a sense, we are already with them.

Yep.  It's enough to rattle our brains.  But it's also a whole different way of looking at our life here on planet earth and the life to come (or already is!). Maybe it can make our grief easier to bear and our joys even more joyful.  We are already part of eternity... We even tune in to snippets of it once in a while if we let ourselves be sensitive to it.

Wibble-wobble frequently this year!  Don't let time rule you... It's not really even real.

Father,
The more we figure out, the more mystery we find.  We give you praise for the mystery of eternity.  Amen