How You Can Experience More of Eternity

Just the other night when I was trying to fall asleep I found myself wondering what things in life I enjoy the most. The initial list that came to my mind was all about practicing hospitality, building my company, and writing books.

Then when I thought about those things further I realized I liked them, but there were things I loved even more.

I remembered being a kid, playing with a toy jeep.

It was a gift, a jeep with a plastic kayak strapped to the roof. I remember the timelessness of the play, and how I could go for hours digging little rivers in the dirt and turning on the hose to float the kayak down the stream. It was during those times of play when life felt eternal.

Later in life I felt it again when I went through a season of memorizing poems. I used to carry them around in my pocket and pull them out all day to mull them over and repeat their lines. The poems transported me back into that sense of timelessness.

They say when you’re in your “zone” as a creative, time stands still.

I’ve experienced that, too.

When I wrote my first book I’d come home from work at night, exhausted, but I’d find rest sitting at my computer telling myself a story.

So right there in bed I decided to make a list of the things I really loved:

1. Storms. Any weather that is violent.

2. Poems. Memorizing them and thinking about them.

3. Writing with no care of publication.

4. Time with Betsy.

5. The first 30 minutes of a bike ride.

The list will grow, I’m sure.

And the longer it grows, the more time I want to spend chasing that sense of eternity. Some poet-theologians speculate that sense of timelessness is a prophetic groaning of heaven. I like that idea.

Photo Credit: Mikaela Hamilton

I like the idea that, at least experientially, we can stretch time out a bit, slow it down, fit more of life into its cracks and crevasses.

Life will resist, of course. And we can’t all live in the timeless every hour of the day. But we can find those cracks. And we can slip into them from time to time. If for no other reason than to sense a bit of heaven.

How You Can Experience More of Eternity is a post from: Storyline Blog