Time after time

Christian Century, Feb 22, 2005

TIME AFTER TIME: When Professor David Wang asks his students how they'd respond if they were sentenced to eating oatmeal the rest of their lives, the thought of such tedium wakes them up. Some say they'd rather die. It is part of the human predicament that "managing tick-tock time can be a tiresome affair," says Wang.

But the cliche that "times flies when you're having fun," conveys a genuine insight--that it is during moments of sensual pleasure that we forget time, get lost in it, perhaps even get a glimpse of eternity. Art--beauty--can do that to us: "When art is experienced, time comes to a standstill. At least it becomes experientially elastic." Art, a gift from our Creator God, is a harbinger of eternity, "where by definition there is no tick-tocking" at all (Mars Hill Review, Issue 24).