My grandson is learning to tell time.

As we talked about the movement of the hour and minute hands, I was reminded of myself at that age. I can still remember gazing at the kitchen clock and puzzling over its complex face. The passing of time seemed imperceptible as the hands slowly crept between the numerals to mark the hours.

My first watch was a gift from my parents upon entering nursing school — a second hand with which to check pulses was a must. With the advent of the smartphone and its various features, people shifted from wearing watches to simply checking their phones. Then the Fitbit watch arrived. Now you can wear a deluxe fitness and activity tracker which at any given second reveals your heart rate, number of steps, water consumption, sleep cycle, and more.

When I was young, the school year seemed to pass slowly and summer vacation stretched out in a seemingly endless fashion, filled with leisurely beach excursions, games of tag in the field, and catching fireflies on warm summer nights.

By contrast, time now seems to race ahead of me, dragging me along. A song from the 90s comes to mind: “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, into the future.”

Yesterday, I came across a poem that I wrote in high school. It was assigned at the beginning of class and had to be turned in as we left, so I penned it quickly. I had spent the previous afternoon with my grandmother and had noticed the tell-tale signs of aging, which spilled over into this youthful expression of my feelings:

Crevices, deep and narrow,

Lines running zig zag,

And connecting to one another.

Each experience leaves its mark,

Whether it be happy or ominously sad,

The wrinkles in your face.

I was 17 years old then, and, as I paused yesterday to calculate my grandmother’s age at the time, I was shocked to realize that the 17-year-old me is now the exact age my grandmother was when I recorded my emotions.

“Time keeps on slippin’ into the future.”

All creation is bound by the limits of time — the sun rises and it sets and the changing seasons mark the years.

King Solomon, known as the wisest ruler of God’s people, explained in the Book of Ecclesiastes that “there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time plant and a time to uproot …”

Solomon goes on to explain that God “has set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11).”

Because mankind is created in God’s image, His design includes a divinely implanted sense of purpose and an internal longing for both a spiritual and an eternal connection with Him. The theme of the entire Book of Ecclesiastes is that life is meaningless apart from God.

God is eternal and is outside the realm of time: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1:8).'”

C. S. Lewis — well-known British writer, literary scholar, and theologian — explained the relationship of time and God’s eternal existence in this way: If you could extend a sheet of paper endlessly in both directions, representing the eternality of God, and then drew a short line on the paper, the line would represent all of time and would be fully contained within the eternal nature of God.

There is neither beginning nor end with God — which completely boggles our infinite minds.

“Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God (Psalm 90:1).”

There are nine time zones in the United States alone, with more than 24 different time zones in the world. Though this life is bound by time, our soul and our spirit man are not — for they are eternal.

God chose to enter the realm of time through Jesus Christ: “… he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him (Hebrews 9:26b-28).”

At the predicted time, Christ will return — in the meanwhile, time is slipping quickly by, for time waits for no one.

Michelle Smith serves alongside her husband, Gary, as part of the leadership team of New Life Christian Fellowship. She founded Purely Women Ministries with the purpose of helping women of all ages discover their true identity as women of God. She can be reached at michelle@newlifealpena.org.