Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

One of my favorite pop groups is Chicago. I’ve enjoyed the music, mainly because of the brass. I love their use of horns. One of their hit songs was call “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” In it they ask the question, and then follow it with another question: “Does anybody really care about time?”

Time is an unusual commodity. You only have a finite amount of it each day. You cannot save time; you can only spend it. If you do not use it productively you can never get it back. Let’s take a closer look at time.

God invented time when He separated the light from the dark. God made evening and morning = 1 day.

The Jewish calendar was developed as a lunar-based method to track the length of a year, with either 12 or 13 months. Each month has either 29 or 30 days

They add an entire month every 2-3 years.

Julian calendar had 365 days per year, plus Leap Day every 4^th year in February.

Gregorian calendar, which is still used today, has 365 days per year. Every four years a Leap Day is added to February. However, even this has problems. Every 100 years they skip adding the Leap Day. Every 400 years they add the Leap Day.

Even this is not exactly accurate. The most accurate measure of time is the atomic clock. However, due to the earth’s rotation on its axis continually slowing, a Leap Second is now added periodically to keep “time” consistent. The last one was added on Tuesday, June 30, 2015.

Over the years I’ve noticed several important markers of our world has some unusual characteristics. For instance, the number Pi, which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle compared to its diameter. Both the circumference and diameter are finite numbers; measurable definitively. However, the resulting ratio is always the same number: 3.14159265359 … It is a non-repeating decimal. We call this an irrational number. It has no ending. You cannot measure it definitively.

Another anomaly is a mathematical constant called “e”. It is called the base of “natural logarithms. The value is approximately 2.71828 … It is also a non-repeating decimal, irrational, yet occurs naturally in our world.

What does this tell us about the world God created? It is not rational. It is beyond our ability to fully understand.

It was not until today that I considered time also being a non-absolute. God said evening and morning. We try calling it 24 hours. As close as we have come to quantifying it we still have to make adjustments, because every attempt to define God’s creation comes up short.

For most of us, knowing the current hour is sufficient. Any industry related to transportation has to keep things down to minutes. Perhaps NASA needs split-second accuracy to place a spacecraft on a planet millions of miles away that takes years to arrive at its destination. All I know is that God does not operate in time. He gave time to man so we could mark our lives. He knew we would need definitive parameters in which to live. We push the boundaries of our existence to the max but still cannot find a way to quantify God. I believe that is intentional.