I was a bit bored a week ago... Maybe, not so bored as tired. The last two years have been mega challenging. I feel sometimes as though the world around me is an oyster shell where I am totally alone and enclosed. Like John the Baptist, I feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness. I am not a lonely person. Being alone in my space allows me to experience God in more unique and spectacular ways.
I wonder why that in such an interconnected world, with billions of cyberspace-savvy individuals glued almost permanently to email, facebook, twitter and a host of others, interpersonal relationships have cracked down the middle. The 21st century human finds it almost impossible to nurture relationships around him or her but has millions of friends in cyberspace. Divorce rates even in the so called conservative African context have shot through the roof.
Many smartly dressed and upwardly mobile persons, wielding mobile phones of all shapes and sizes - BBs, Ipads - possess hearts that have suffered a serious condition of atrophy. So many out there crave the human touch - eye contact that says, "stranger, though I have never met you but as long as you're God's creation, I care"; a gentle touch on the shoulder; a smile...our fingers are so adept on laptops and iPads but lack the sensitivity to touch hearts and lives. We are poor in the heart business while our bank accounts continue to swell in dollars and Euros like busted septic tanks spewing their filthy waste all around.
Dear reader, I digress. I set off to write about my visit to the bookshelf but my heart is very heavy tonight. I must write to stay alive.
So there I was, standing in front of a bookshelf overcrowded with books I am dying to read or re-read. The refrain that runs around my brain these days is: "I am too busy to read; too tired to read; I have to work hard for the money".
I digress again. So sorry. So, there I am in front of the bookshelf. I survey the vast titles - women empowerment, Christian literature, English literature, English Syntax, history - I lovingly caress my favourite books - Wuthering Heights, Crime and Punishment... I wonder how such a gentle and peaceful woman could be enraptured by such tempestuous works. Could it be that I have fires burning that may erupt some day under standard temperature and pressure? Who knows!
Dear Reader, I am digressing yet again. Perhaps you should put a rein on my thoughts..."I live because I write" or is it that 'I write because I live?'
So, there I am in front of the bookshelf. Some books are so mildewed...I skip them - Girls at War; I wonder how Achebe ever came up with such a title. My fingers glide over other books - public relations, corporate sustainability, my friend's work about Edo history. I sigh, I think of friends that touch one's life at a point in time and then disappear down the road; they disappear like vapour from life's teapot or life's pot of egusi soup. This is why I started thinking of the time traveller.
While still ruminating on whether to read Joyce Meyer's Battlefield of the Mind again, I spot this paperback publication in an attractive orange and white colour. Though very frayed at the edges, I nevertheless stand on tip-toe and stretch to pick it out of the rows and rows of neatly stacked books. I mutter under my breath, "there is a time for everything under the sun". How come that in all these years, I do not remember ever reading H.G. Well's Selected Short Stories?
I reverently flip over the initial pages. Aha, there it is; my name and the city and date where and when I purchased the book – Calabar: It brings back strong emotions and memories. The date reads 8th of May 2002. Is it a coincidence that I am writing this piece in May, nine years down the road?
I turn more pages and the “Time Machine” is the first chapter I come across. I wonder, 'did the writer of the movie, The Time Traveller's Wife' receive his inspiration from Mr. Well's short story?
Intrigued, I make a cup of tea and lay down on my bed with the title I have finally selected. Ready to travel through time and space in the pages of the book.
"...space, as our Mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others", observes the Time Traveler who is the chief protagonist of this strange tale.
He continues, "...why three dimensions particularly - why not another direction at right angles to the other three". Pursuing the same train of thought he argues, " there is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it". Following on this argument, the Time Traveler invents a Time Machine that can take its passenger back and forth in time; sometimes at giddying speeds of one year per second.
This ability to accelerate into the future and and to go back into the historical domain reminded me of one of my most cherished Bible verses. It states that God Almighty knows the end from the beginning. He can move with fluidity from the foundations of the earth (when chaos existed and the three- in-one Godhead held a conference on the status of the earth and decidedly intoned, "Let there be...” and the awesome creation story was put into motion...And the invisible became visible. The invisible things are eternal, endless; while the visible world is transitory.
Unlike the Time Traveller, I believe that rather than being a linear line where you have only the past and the present, Time surrounds the other dimensions of space which because they are visible belong to the class of transitory elements – they are bound to get exhausted and to pass away.
Time is invisible; thus, it is eternal. Every man and woman who wears the visible human body knows that the body will only live in a portion of the time resource which is very limited in comparison to the unlimited and inexhaustible resource that Time represents. The visible body which we see has restricted access to an average of 75 years out of Time's endless and inextinguishable expanse. When the earth body which is visible exhausts its allotment of the Time resource, it releases the invisible part of the man or woman – the part of the human person which is eternal.
My conclusion is that God is not a time traveller who has access to only the past and present and cannot control his movement through the futuristic and historical realms. God owns Time. He is the Alpha and Omega; the beginning and end. His motion in Time is not linear. He can create time and stop time; He can even shorten Time and lengthen it for that matter. He controls all the dimensions of Space. He can reposition them and defy the laws of gravity [Jesus did and so did Elijah, and Enoch. In the case of the floating axe head, was it a defiance of gravity or control of the laws of magnetism?] Truth is, God is the quintessential Time Traveller of all time.
When Jesus came down to earth, he came to demonstrate that human beings can operate like the Godhead. He said, if you have faith as little as mustard seed, you can command an inanimate object - a mountain - to be repositioned in time and space and it is bound to obey. He said we can do greater works than He did. We can also control time and make it work for us. We can also shorten time, lengthen it and stop it by Faith. Prophets constantly reach into the future to prepare people to face the future and to be prepared and in control.
May 14, 2011.
