The Eternal Now

The joining of these two words is not new to me. I have heard the phrase since my earliest years when in my adolescence I read Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion. Though it attracted me like a flitting bird seeking a steady perch in a bush, I had no idea what it meant.

From time to time through the years, I returned to this devotional classic and the words fascinated me with the kind of interest that a fish has in a darting lure. Like many fish I never struck the lure; I never got fully hooked. Kelly was not the only fisherman for my soul; other anglers for God also cast these words before me, but to no avail. To shift the metaphor, I think it might have been a matter of the soil. Perhaps these words fell on the path or on stony ground and had no depth to endure the sun and wind. And, I didn't get it nor did it get me.

Though I didn't get it, my desire to capture this image exceeded my understanding. All my life, at least since I was nine, I feared death. My fear was not the process of wilting like the grass of the field, but entering into eternity. The notion of unending time – forever and forever and forever – shook my uncomprehending mind like a bush in a whirlwind, and it filled me with an anxiety I could not control. Still I did not comprehend the meaning of the Eternal Now.

A time or two I almost saw it, but today as I read, I saw. Heretofore, I had looked without seeing, had listened without hearing, and I had realized without knowing. But today I saw, I heard, I knew. All my life I have thought past, present and future, and future is forever before me like the past is forever behind me. Today I see that NOW is eternity. It is neither behind me nor before me but NOW. Eternity is not the endless unfolding of years or eons. It is NOW! Was and shall be are nothing but memories and expectations of the Eternal Now.