A Drop in the Bucket...

Have you ever heard the metaphor that the length of time that humanity has been on earth has been a drop in a bucketful of water when compared with how long the dinosaurs were on earth? When I was a kid I was fascinated with dinosaurs – they rocked. And since I was into them, paleontologists have found a bunch more. Kids today who are into dinosaurs have that much more to explore and learn about!

But back to the math for a moment. The dinosaurs were on the earth for over 150 million years. Human civilization has been around for…oh…like maybe 20,000 years (and that’s probably with a generous definition of what ‘civilization’ means). Have you grasped what an incredibly small slice of time we have been around?

It’s sort of the same feeling you get when you look at a night sky full of stars and realize how utterly tiny the earth is compared to what else is out there.

So where am I going with this? Well…have you thought recently about the afterlife? Now this isn’t a big speech about Heaven and Hell. But have you really thought recently about what happens after you shuffle off this mortal coil?

Usually we don’t. Usually we spend almost all our time thinking about what’s going on right in front of…whatever is requiring our action (paper, job, etc.). A friend of mine calls it “the tyranny of the urgent.” But think about how loooooooong eternity is. And so how infinitesimally small our time on earth is. It doesn’t even register a blip. Not even that drop in the bucket, or the blink of an eye. Our time here, as a percent of the time we spend in the afterlife, is so close to zero that it can’t even be fathomed.

And I think that makes our time here really precious. In fact, our life here on earth is the only ‘time’ when the word ‘time’ has any meaning. When one moment being followed by another and another has any significance. So take a few of those moments, and consider what a rare and wondrous gift this thing called life really is.

Have a good weekend.
Peace,
Kevin