The Physics of Time and the Future in the Past

The following is a copy of the Thomas Question email devotional. You can subscribe to the email edition from our website.

If I can pull this off in three reasonable paragraphs, it will be something worthy of note. And if I can't, well, you won't be reading it because I'll write something else. At any rate, I bought a book recently because of a single sentence. On page 141 of The View from the Center of the Universe it says this, "Much of our future already exists - it just hasn't gotten here yet." I thought it was brilliant and it crystallized something in my mind which has been turning over in there for some time.

Now the author's happen to be using that sentence to describe a special relationship between space and time. Let me use one of their examples. Because of the distance between us and the sun it takes a full 8 minutes for it's light to get here. And it also means you never seen the sun as it IS, but only as it WAS - 8 minutes ago. And in a strange kind of way, it also means we never really see the present. We only see the past - and it also means the future has already happened. Even when you look at the light switch across the room - you're not seeing it as it is. You're seeing as it was some fraction of a second ago.

Why do I care about all this? Because I think it's a fantastic analogy for something I've been encountering over and over again in Proverbs. It's about integrity and how the end of a thing is sown at the beginning. "The righteousness of the blameless keeps their ways straight, but the wicked fall by their own wickedness" (Proverbs 11.5). It means that a die is cast at the very first step in any decision. The integrity of our choices determines the outcome. And like a stream making it's way to the ocean (sorry for mixing analogies), it may take a long and meandering route but it will still get there. It means, like the sun, it may take some number of minutes, hours, days or years, to see the outcome - to see what's already happened - but it was there all along.

That's it. Three paragraphs and I'm happy with it. I have a sentence in my daily journal I read every morning and it says, "Character is a deep conviction that anything outside integrity simply won't work." So again, in the words of these authors, much of our future already exists - it just hasn't gotten here yet. I hope that will serve as a challenge to you in the choices you're making right now.

Join us this Sunday in our new location in the Encore Cinema's on Speers Road just East of Dorval Drive. Visit our website for directions.

I hope to see you Sunday and I hope you bring someone with you,

CSW

LAST SUNDAY
Another of our 8 small steps you can actually take toward Ancient Christianity: find the free prize inside. You can listen to this message and the rest of the series by visiting our website or subscribing to our podcast..

THIS SUNDAY
There's a red wire and a black wire in most every device that uses energy. Get those wires wrong and nothing else will work. I'd like to talk another kind of critical switch we all need to make.

OUR NEW FACILITY
This past Sunday was our first service in the Encore Cinema's on Speers Road. Join us this Sunday at 9.45 for Starbucks. Visit our website for directions.

I'M WORKING THROUGH THE LIST
If you signed up, don't worry, it's happening.

A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
A few of us have been working on an idea for a fall series that is about more than just a topic we pick and tell you about. We'll be making an announcement about it this Sunday in preparation for the fall.