With phrases often used such as “timelines,” we visualize time on a two-dimensional plane: point A to point B, beginning and end. This perspective is limited in its perception, as a man is bound by the sight of his eyes. As time persists forward, our keen ability to acknowledge the past inhibits our ability to exist in the present, thus stalling our future. While reflection is a necessary aspect of growth, allowing ourselves to exist outside of the present ultimately leads to stagnation unless it’s led with purpose.
”Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
Mark 11:22-24
This is my favorite Bible verse, and it exemplifies a moment where one places themselves in the future, envisioning a state of completion rather than an event occurring in itself. While capturing detail is important when looking beyond, the most important detail of all is the feeling that state of completion produces within you. If you are capable of truly feeling something before it exists in the material world, you have crossed a bridge many have not. I won’t say it’s bound to occur, but I will say that, given the right circumstances and heart posture, anything is possible. The goal, as crazy as it sounds, is to live as if it has already been completed. The truth here is that the change or completion you seek already lies within you. Just as plants grow from within, so do we. The exterior will evolve as the interior transforms, and this process doesn’t occur overnight, even though the final results often appear to.
Our perception of time can be a tool to progress forward or a curse that impedes our growth. The choice lies in our posture and how we decide to perceive time: a reflection of an echoing past or the steps needed to reach a destination that already lies ahead. The choice is ultimately yours.
The replay of a distant memory, the vision of a fading dream.
Time will always tell, water flows downstream.
Picture yourself standing on a riverbank. Can you see where the river begins and where it ends? We are incapable of seeing past the river’s bend. That is our “lifetime” as perceived by men: two points and a line, placed on a much greater line extending far beyond our moment in time.
Before we look down from above, we must look within. Picture yourself as a leaf, twisting and turning, following the current. You are no longer the observer; you become what is being pushed and pulled through an ever-evolving progression that ultimately leads to the source. The leaf does not decide where it goes; it only follows the river as it bends and folds.
Now we take to the skies and picture ourselves as the swan flying up above. You could follow the leaf and see where it leads, but you already know where the river starts and where it meets the sea.
Ultimately, those are the three ways we are able to perceive time; the fourth remains entirely out of reach. It’s that of the sun, which not only sees the entire river but sees where the water turns to air and is swept by the breeze to meet the mountains once more, with tears ready to pour downstream. That is the cycle we cannot see. We don’t live long enough to see where the river’s bend leads, just as we are unable to remember from where came our seed.