The past isn’t a museum, it is happening every moment we live. We are creating our past every moment. How we understand the past is a very present concern. We need to be discerning in understanding the past. And we need to be mindful that our present lives are adding to the past we are accumulating.

I recently turned that magical age of 65, where the social services part of our government suddenly becomes very important. When I think about my life at this point, I’m very aware that the thing I have most of is my past. It seems like aging is simply the rapid accumulation of the past through wanton spending of an ever-decreasing supply of the future. The question is, what do we do with the past we’ve accumulated? Is the past an asset or a liability? How do we draw on the past for good use? How can a poor use of the past hinder our present and our future? These are questions of increasing urgency to people my age—maybe any age.

The Past Is the Human Experience of Time

Here’s a question that may seem dumb but is actually pretty important. How do we know there is a past? The obvious answer is that we know there is a past because we experience the passage of time. But that doesn’t solve the question. Where does time come from?

The perception of the passage of time is a distinctively human experience. God is eternal—timeless. Everything He creates exists in time. “In the beginning” (Gen. 1:1) does not refer to the beginning of God; it is the beginning of creation. Creation is time-constrained, while God is outside of time.

All of creation records the passage of time. Trees grow over time. Sharp rocks become smooth stones through weathering over time. Animals instinctively know when to build nests, when to hibernate, and when to migrate. But humans are the only creatures who conceptualize time, who “count” the passage of time. God called Adam to exercise dominion over creation—to tend it for good. One of the ways we do that is to manage life according to time. Days and seasons and years and centuries and epochs and millenniums, as well as hours and seconds and nanoseconds, are measurements we use to make sense of our existence in the exercise of dominion.

And we’re constantly monkeying with time. Anyone who has a spouse who watches a lot of sports knows not to trust when you hear, “I’ll be there in a second; there’s only two minutes left in the game!”

Think about it another way. How many of us can think back to what happened while we were asleep at 4 am this morning? Things didn’t stop happening when we fell asleep last night. We just don’t have any memory of it because sleep is a human state that stops tracking time.

God relates to us through time. We are not Buddhists, finding enlightenment in escape from the constraints of time.

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