How long is Forever?

How Long is Forever? 

It may appear that there is no way to count in years the length of eternity.  And that is correct.  Imagine for a moment the short time of a nan-o-second.  Accordingly it is a unit of time equal to one billionth of a second.  That is almost too strenuous to even write how many zeros you would need to add for a visible description.  

Look into the cosmos and wonder how far away is the most distant star even using the world’s best telescope.  Since the distance of stars is measured by light years we must take the speed of light and calculate the number of seconds in a year.  Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.  60 seconds x 60 minutes = 3,600 seconds or one hour x 24 hours = 86, 400 seconds.    Multiply that by 365 days = 31,536,000  = seconds in one year.   31,536,000 seconds = 186,000 miles (the speed of light) x 31,536,000 = 5,865,696,000,000 miles. This is the distance light will travel in one year.  That’s 5 trillion, 865 billion, 696, million miles in one year.  Almost too incomprehensible to even think about.  

Eternity cannot be measured in time since it has no beginning or ending.  Space and time are not considered since it is an entity that always is.  That calculates a life for the souls God created to live with him is not measured and has no such thing as night and day, past or future.  That is why there is no past participle needed to identify what God did in the past.  It is alwaysin a present existence without a time reference.  

Creation of everything that God made is called in a present mode since he creates life to be with him eternally.  This of course creates another mystery that even the most astute person could never make heads or tails about.  How we may ask could he create man and everything in the universe in a period of time (as humanity needs to understand) that has no past?  The answer is he didn’t.  We can only place everything regarding God’s creation as a period of time that doesn’t exist in eternity.  Since God is eternal, the time elements of past and future we need to understand, can only  exist within our conception of time and space since we too are living from a past and into a future. 

This of course continues to unfold before us questions that no human mind can unwrap since we deal with finiteness which means there is a limit of our ability to understand that are real only to the divine nature of God.  I wrote an article some time back that dealt with this issue and of course the answers Augustine, myself, and many theologians will always seek to understand will remain unanswered.

My question in the header asks “how long is eternity,” will never have a solution since it isn’t measured by a finite mind.  There are no text-books or drafts from the best minds on earth to guide our searching interests.  This is one more mystery that we can only wonder about and accept what we already have; the will of God and our obedience to his graciousness.  

Ralph B. Hathaway