I’ve always associated that phrase with God’s eternal nature. A thousand years like a day, a day like a thousand years. In other words time doesn’t matter all that much to God.

The last few days I’ve had that sense of a day being like a thousand years because time, or my perception of it anyway, is that it has moved
ever so slowly.

My dad lies inert in a coma (6 days and counting) so we sit by his side and pray that nothing happens. We don’t want any excitement. Any of that is almost invariably bad news. And so when God hears our petition for a non-eventful day, then well it is a bit boring. For which I am grateful. And bored.

My mum has had both her knees replaced and has severe arthritis. She is slow. Very slow. It reminded me of going for a walk with a toddler, except I couldn’t pick her up. Time, and us, moved very slowly. Three times slower than normal as we slowly stepped our way to the hospital and back.

Slowness and boredom are two things I have become quite poor at handling. Something must be done to speed things along. Pick up the phone, check the feed, play a game, read an email. Anything to make time go by faster. Yes please to a thousand years being like a day.

That in fact seems to be where our attention deficit society is taking us. Embrace multiple screens, constant flow of info, a thousand years worth of data in just one day, and if we can let’s pick the pace up.

But we are now no longer able to deal with the other side of the equation, at least I am not anyway. A day, like a thousand years? No, thank you, sounds awful.

Until that is, you begin to slow down too, to pay attention, to really see and hear all that is happening around you, within you and become alert to what could happen through you. I doubt this slow state will last all that long for me. Sooner or later me and the world will start to hurry along again.

But perhaps one of the joys of heaven will be that we will revel in the slowness of time because there is so much to see, so much to feel, so much to absorb that we will delight that a day is like a thousand years.