In Search of the Perfect Time Piece
Today’s scientific research requires super accurate clocks. The best mechanical clocks are inadequate because they might gain or lose at least four seconds a year.
Modern quartz watches are more reliable. They depend on the unvarying frequency of vibration of a quartz crystal when an electric current is applied. But there is still a mechanical element to quartz crystal clocks. The frequency of vibration depends on the crystal’s size and shape, and no two crystals are precisely alike. Quartz clocks are accurate to about one second in ten years.
The most accurate clocks these days are atomic clocks, which have an accuracy exceeding one second in a thousand years. Atomic clocks keep time by counting the vibrations of atoms. This property is unaffected by outside conditions because every chemical element has a distinct and inherently stable characteristic frequency of vibration.
The cesium atomic clock, for example, has over nine billion vibrations a second. Even more precise are atomic clocks which use hydrogen. These are accurate to about one second in nearly two million years. But still scientists are not satisfied! They are working on a mercury atomic clock, which they hope will be accurate to one second in two billion years.
So next time you check your watch, remember it only tells you the approximate time!
Time is a big issue in our fast-paced technological culture. Schedules, timetables, daily planners and “to do” lists encourage us to subdivide our days into ever smaller units so that we can cram a few more things in. Ever-faster computer components, astronomical calculations and a concern with precision drive scientists to find more accurate ways of measuring time.
Other cultures have a much more relaxed attitude toward time. The pace of their lives revolves more around seasonal cycles than a daily “to do” list. The technology of hand tools and plowing with donkeys and oxen does not require great precision in measuring time.
There is a way of taking the best of both worlds. Precise measuring of time can be a valuable tool if we see it as a servant. For too many of us in the West, it becomes the master and we find ourselves serving a schedule instead of doing what is really important. Successful living requires maintaining balance and keeping the things that matter at the top of our priority list regardless of what the schedule says.
Time is enormously important to humans because we are so confined by it. Some of us can become frantic in the face of what we want to do and the limited time we have.
It is a point of interest that in the Bible we never read of God being rushed or in a hurry. God is eternal. That is, He lives in a dimension outside of time. He doesn’t just have “all the time in the world,” He is beyond the bounds of time as we know them. Time does not restrict Him.
Though God is eternal and timeless, He also works within time. All of God’s interactions with humanity have a time component because, though God exists outside of time, we do not. Thus we understand that when God intervenes in human history it is not randomly but purposefully. What we need to think about is our response to God’s purposeful interventions in history. If the Eternal One is so interested in us as to initiate a relationship, we would do well to respond.
David Humphreys and Ron Hughes
© August 2004
