How does FOREVER work?

[Salsa_1960]

Sally: "Mommy. Where did God come from?"

Mom: "Well, He's always been here, Sally."

Sally: "How?"

Mom: "I don't know. He just Has."

_____________________________________________________________

Can anyone answer Sally's question. How does forever work? In sign language, you make the sign for "ETERNAL" or "ETERNITY" by making an deaf letter "E" going in a circular motion, because a circle has no beginning and no end. But how does that work in time and physics? And yes, I know that God know's no time (not like we do) but how do you explain it to a human like me....or a child like "Sally."

~Sandy (who still thinks like Sally)

 

[lands21]

One of the wonders of God!

I think it would be hard to explain to anyone, not just a child. I think this would be a good starter for a conversation on faith.

There are many more miracles she will discover that do not make sense.

 

[Ben_Hur]

Sally: "Mommy. Where did God come from?"

Mom: "Well, He's always been here, Sally."

Sally: "How?"

Mom: "I don't know. He just Has."

_____________________________________________________________

Can anyone answer Sally's question. How does forever work? In sign language, you make the sign for "ETERNAL" or "ETERNITY" by making an deaf letter "E" going in a circular motion, because a circle has no beginning and no end. But how does that work in time and physics? And yes, I know that God know's no time (not like we do) but how do you explain it to a human like me....or a child like "Sally."

~Sandy (who still thinks like Sally)

How freaky. I just had the same question from my nine-year-old. He didn't understand my answer.

I practically have a minor in math and I've studied theoretical physics, so I understand it just fine and I have some interesting word pictures to describe it, but none of them worked on my boy.

I talked about the meaning of infinity and how God is outside time and space. I even talked about "flatland" if you've heard of it. Nothing. He simply doesn't have the ability to think in such abstract terms.

How old is Sally?
Oh, and indeed, I had to end the discussion with a lesson on faith (like if I told him I was going to buy him an expensive car...sort of thing).

 

[Salsa_1960]

Well,

"Sally" is really "Amy."

Amy is also 9. It seems to me that it would be easier to explain to her the string theory of physics than to explain the concept of eternity.

~Sandy

 

[1John5:3]

I saw NOVA on PBS last night that dealt with "string theory." It is philosophy or religion, but not science, for sure.


Picture a parakeet in your backyard next to a sandbox. You take a pail, fill it full of sand, and then let some of the grains of sand fallthrough your hands. One bucket of sand has thousands of grains of sand. Let’s imaginethat you could instruct that parakeet to pick up one of the grains of sand in its beak, fly to the moon and drop it off. Let’s say it takes one million years for the parakeet to get to the moon. He puts the grain of sand down and flies back to earth. It takes a million years for him to get back. He then picks up the next grain of sand and flies back to the moon. He drops off that grain and flies back to earth—a million years there, a million years back. One by one the parakeet takes each grain of sand in your sandbox to the moon. When he is finished, you take him down to Key West, Florida and there you show him the Atlantic Ocean and the beach which runs along the coast. You tell him, “I want you to start clearing off the sand on this beach one grain at a time.” He starts there, then works his way up to Miami, then to Jacksonville, Hilton Head, Charleston, New York City, Boston, and up to-ward Maine. He takes each grain of sand to the moon one at a time, a million years there, a million years back. When he’s done with all of that, you take him out to the West Coast and from Mexico all the way up to California and Oregon, you tell him to take one grain of sand at a time and fly it to the moon. When the parakeet finishes with all of that, you say, I’ve got this other little spot called the Sahara Desert. I want you to clear the sand off of that place one at a time.” When he finishes that, you say, “Three-fourths of the surface of the earth is water. Let me drain the oceans dry. At the bottom of the oceans you have a lot of sand.Take all of that sand to the moon, one grain of sand at a time, a million years there, and a million years back.” When he finishes, if you could add up all of the millions of years it had taken to remove all of the sand from all of those places, eternity would just be beginning.

 

[TCapp]

I remember my dad explaining it to me when I was little. He asked me to picture a rock as large as a house. He told me that a little bird would come along and sharpen his beak every 100 years. He said that by the time the rock was worn down to nothing... eternity will have passed.

(Yes, I realize now his example is finite and isn't completely analogous.. but I was little and he was trying to get me to understand that eternity was a LONG time...)

 

[Salsa_1960]

I remember my dad explaining it to me when I was little. He asked me to picture a rock as large as a house. He told me that a little bird would come along and sharpen his beak every 100 years. He said that by the time the rock was worn down to nothing... eternity will have passed.

(Yes, I realize now his example is finite and isn't completely analogous.. but I was little and he was trying to get me to understand that eternity was a LONG time...)

And I think that the beak would be gone long before the rock.

 

[CopticOrthodox]

God's name is I Am. He is He Who Is. We receive our existence from Him, but He doesn't receive His existence, He has no source, existence is part of His Nature, of who He is. God is not something in the universe, He is existence Himself, and everything comes from Him. He never came into being, He just Is, not like you are I are because we came into being, but because Being is part of who He is.

I don't particularly like all this philosophy stuff... but Aquinace's proofs of God might help... there is motion in the world, but nothing has motion unless it receives it form outside itself, so there's a chain of events giving something motion, but this chain can't be infinately long, or there would be no motion since there'd be nothing at the start to begin giving motion to the system. There must be a first mover to start things, and that is God.

All our ideas about something must having a beginning apply to creation, and it's just completely different with He Who Is.

It doesn't make sense to think of a time before He was, because He is existence, there is no existence without Him, He is reality, He just Is... that wasn't clear at all but you should be able to find explanations if you look for them online or in libraries.

 

[Ben_Hur]

I saw NOVA on PBS last night that dealt with "string theory." It is philosophy or religion, but not science, for sure.

LOL. It is most certainly science, but you may not get that from a NOVA episode. Try a book on it. But as you pointed out there are philosophical and maybe even religous implications. Sort of like the study of entropy is science, but has some interesting implications.

Gosh, I talk about this so much I'm going to have to pull my text out from under the dust...

 

[Rafael]

Science keeps giving little glimpses of what the Bible already tells us. The PBS program was interesting, even as fractal mathematics point to more understanding of God. Remember Jesus walking in and out of our dimension after the resurrection? God stands outside of time, and although we measure it, it reflects an attribute of a flawed creation, as the Bible says that ALL creation groans under the weight of sin. Somehow God stands outside of this time trap and is able to have power over it. The speed of light may have something to do with escaping this time trap, as Einsteins theory points us to - approaching such speed makes time less and mass more (for you dieters....ha!)

All connected to His greatness and glory.

 

[HeatherJay]

"For ever! For all eternity! Not for a year or for an age but for ever. Try to imagine the awful meaning of this. You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness; and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of the air: and imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all? Yet at the end of that immense stretch of time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended. At the end of all those billions and trillions of years eternity would have scarcely begun. And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away, and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain, and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended; even then, at the end of such a period, after that eon of time the mere thought of which makes our very brain reel dizzily, eternity would scarcely have begun." --- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ~ James Joyce

Love, Heather

 

[SavedByGrace3]

An interesting phase used several times in the OT:

Psa 90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, Or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Two everlastings?
Logic class taught us that there can only be one infinity... and it stretches through time from the past into the future. But this verse talks about two infinities. One in the timeless past, and one in the timeless future. Some of this is to much for us to try and get dogmatic about. Define time? space? the ages? God existing in space and time or outside of space and time? pheu! Gives you a headache just thinking about it.
Just believe that Jesus is the exact image of the Father... and that is enough. Hang with Him. It will all work out in the... ummmm everlasting.

 

[Rafael]

It will all work out in the... ummmm everlasting.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

I saw NOVA on PBS last night that dealt with "string theory." It is philosophy or religion, but not science, for sure..

Much of what parades as theoretical science is popycock. It makes no sense. Quantum Mechanics for instance. It is fantasy. This is religion pure and simple.
Scientists are so forgiving of these things... people think they are logical and trustworthy. They are not.

 

[Ben_Hur]

Here is a great book for the semi lay-person. But you should be strong in your faith before reading.

"Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku.

It is a great overall study from particles, superstrings, time warps, 10-dimensional universe, multiple universes, etc.

 

[FOMWatts<><]

I like to answer it to myself this way...

Some things have to be seen to be believed...and some things have to be believed to be seen.