People and Attention

I have decided that we live out our lives in order to get attention. A great example of this are the social networks like Facebook and MySpace. It is easy to see why these sites are so popular - people can check out your profile and learn more about yourself. We all want to be heard and seen. 

The status bar in Facebook allows us to tell our friends "Hey, this is what I'm doing!" Twitter allows anyone to post their current status from anywhere in the world. Using a mobile device I can give everyone a play by play of my life. As unusual as this sounds - because really, can't we ask "Who really cares to know everything about my life?" - it is a very popular site. We try anything that has a chance for us to gain attention.

I used to live my life thinking I was immune to this simple truth.  I sought to not gain attention and to not be seen.  However, I realized, after my life came crashing down, that I was running from the pain of not getting attention.  I was not popular, smooth, nor exciting enough to make a person turn their head my direction.  I was running from the realization that I did not have what it takes to gain the attention I wanted.  Thus, as I was rebuilding my life, I came to understand and accept the type of attention that I deserve.  All of this to say: no one is truly immune to centering their life around getting attention.

We dress to get attention from the opposite sex (or the same sex I suppose, if you swing that direction).  We perform well in school to gain the 'good job' attention.  We perform poorly in school to gain any type of attention even if it is negative.  We get very excited to see our name in the paper or to be mentioned on the news - it means many many people get to see us!  Honestly, take a look at your life and I think you'll see two patterns.  First, most of the things you do during the day are an attempt to gain attention.  Second, you avoid attempting to gain attention because you know you'll fail and it will hurt.  The more I look at my life the more I realize that this is the case.

God and Time

I was pondering the concept of time in relation to God.  Time is an Earthly measure of preceding and coming events.  However, God is not under the restrictions of time (He created time after all) as is relevant by God being everywhere and at everytime.  He does not necessarily see the future as He is already there.  He knows the past, present, and future because He exists in all three simultaneously.  This implies that He has existed forever although that doesn't make much sense since He exists forever long ago at the present moment.

I started to think that maybe God is like a timeline.  We can point our view at a certain specific point on the line but we can go an infinite distance in either direction.  However, that places God under the restriction of time.  So, I came to the conclusion that the universe has not been around forever.  God started time at some point.  He created a line with a starting point and an ending point.  He placed all the events on the line (creation, humans, extinction, etc) and pressed "Go".

Thus, as far as time is concerned, God is looking in from the outside watching it go by much like we can watch the little dot move across iTunes when listening to a song.  He can go backwards, forwards, and play the timeline He has created.  Obviously, He does this all simultaneously since He is everywhere on the timeline at once.

This is not saying God is the 'clock maker God'.  He is most certainly involved personaly and significantly in all of our lives.  This only pertains to the subject of God and time.