INTRO: Many of you are reading through the Bible. Some of you are doing so as families, and I am encouraged by that. So this morning I am going to give you a survey of over 7,000 New Years Days. You will have to put on your thinking caps and be ready to fly. Our distance is far. You see, today is the day of year we call New Years Day. New Years day is a marker of time. Time is an incredible subject. In VBS over the years I have taught a class giving the timeline of the ages of the past, the present and the future. To begin that class I would say to my students, "How many of you know what time is?" And they all put up their hands. And then I would say, "That is good. Now write down in the blank space on your paper what time is.
I have never found a definition that truly defines what time is. I briefly checked the internet. One article was titled, "What is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory. The article began like this, "One way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem. Physicist Sean Carroll has become a bit of a rock star in geek circles by attempting to answer an age-old question no scientist has been able to fully explain: What is time?" So, let me give you Funk & Wagnall's dictionary definition of what time is. They say it is: "The general concept, relations, or fact of continuous or successive existence, capable of division into measurable portions, and comprising the past, present and future." That helps a little. |
