"Annus Mirabilis" is a Latin phrase meaning "extraordinary year" (or "year of miracles"), and although it has been applied to many different years, one of the most significant was 1905. It was in that year that Albert Einstein published not one, but four ground-breaking papers, on the special theory of relativity, the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence. The last of these four yielded his famous equation, e = mc2, but it is the first of these that I would like to explore.
In the special theory of relativity, Einstein took a good, long, hard look at existing physics and found it wanting. Physics up until that time had been dominated by the theories of Sir Isaac Newton. He turned the world of existing Newtonian physics upside down by making a surprising assumption. All the things that we think are constant in this material world, things such as size and shape, mass and time, are not truly constant depending on when and how the measuring is done. The only thing that is constant is the speed of light. This leads to some rather amazing conclusions. For instance, as you accelerate an object, it actually shortens in length and gains mass. For speeds such as we see usually see here on earth, this is imperceptible. At speeds approaching that of the speed of light, the effects are profound; it is like dividing by zero. An object at the speed of light would be infinite in mass and infinitely shortened. And this explains why according to the theory of relativity, nothing can ever travel faster than the speed of light. The closest we can come is when scientists use particle accelerators, and by moving particles near the speed of light, these changes can begin to be detected.
The word "relativity" was meant to describe events as they were "relative" to an observer. If a person was in a spaceship accelerated to near the speed of light, they would not notice these effects. It is the observer who measures the increase in mass and the shortening of length. And time undergoes changes as well, when measured by an outside observer. For the person in such a spaceship, they would experience the normal passage of time, and the outside observer would experience their usual passage of time, but these would actually be quite different. Time would run much slower in the ship, the so-called "time-dilation" effect, and a journey that would seem only a few years in the ship travelling to and from Earth near the speed of light would last hundreds of years for the observer here on Earth. Each would objectively measure the same event with different results.
People have used the word "relatively" to describe things a little differently than "relativity", and when applied to other matters "relatively" describes a subjective sense. It has been jokingly said that the duration of time is "relative" to which side of the bathroom door you are standing on. Clearly some things seem to be over in an instant, and others drag on endlessly, but our clocks are not running faster or slower because of some phenomenon of "relativity", and it is only how we perceive the passage of that time in those circumstances.
When your loved one tells you that they are going to the store for fifteen minutes to pick up some milk, do you grieve? Or if you came home and unexpectedly found a note from your spouse that they had run to the hardware store for a short time, would you be devastated? I would expect not, for you know that they would return in such a brief time that their momentary absence would not make you feel deprived in the least. It would hardly be noticed.
As a heart surgeon and physician, I occasionally must deal with the death of a patient, someone's parent or spouse. I am of the age that occasionally friends and acquaintances pass away, and I have also lost loved ones. I know the heart-wrenching grief and sense of loss that comes with this, and would never try and console someone by minimizing what they are experiencing or sugar-coating it. But for the Christian, there is some hope in understanding the nature of God's time.
The saved Christian will spend eternity in heaven with God and other Christians. Just as travelling at the speed of light causes changes that are like dividing by zero and infinite, God's eternity is like dividing time not by days or weeks or months or years, but like dividing by zero. Eternity is infinite time. You may miss your loved one dearly, and depending on the time of loss, may miss them for years or decades. But you will be reunited with them in heaven, and their absence will seem so very, very brief. If you recall the final verse of "Amazing Grace":
When we've been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We've no less days, to sing His praise
than when we'd first begun.
After you have been reunited with your loved one in heaven for the first ten thousand years, the twenty years you were apart on Earth will seem like only a moment, that they had only gone for a quick trip around the corner to the store. And after the next ten thousand, and the next, it will seem even shorter still. The passage of those years of loss on earth will eventually seem like a split-second. We can look to our future in heaven with the truest of joy, for eternity with those who have meant so much to us.
Newton was right and Einstein was wrong. "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, and in this case I think that this Newton, not Isaac, described God's time. Einstein was an agnostic, and although he did not deny the possibility of God, he did not believe in a personal God at all. However, I think that some of his underlying assumptions are true. All the things that the world thinks are constant, mass and size and time, are really not constant at all. They will all fade away when Christ returns. It truly is only light that is constant, the Light of the Glory of God, which will shine forever.
