Eternity
Eternity is Forever
To say eternity is a long time is true, but inaccurate. Simply because eternity is outside the realm of time. It transcends time. Time is limited. Eternity is not. We see things in a finite way. We see the end to physical things. Things do return to dust. We see the physical end to people, even people that we love. There is decay and reduction in all of creation.
All of us see how life comes and how life ends.
Can we truly understand eternity?
Possibly from a few metaphors.
The Brothers Grimm
Bird of Eternity
(Published in 1812).
This tale included the "bird of eternity" parable in their tale The story defines eternity through a bird sharpening its beak on a diamond mountain once every 100 years; when the mountain wears away, the first second of eternity passes.
The boy describes the Diamond Mountain in Lower Pomerania, which is 2.5 miles high, wide, and deep. A bird arrives every hundred years to sharpen its beak, wearing down the mountain. The time it takes to destroy the mountain equals one second of eternity.
This story emphasizes that even after this massive amount of time, eternity has not even begun
Count the Sand
Sahara Desert
The Sahara Desert is 3.6 Million Square Miles
Some researchers estimate that the Sahara Desert contains 8 octillion grains of sand. A thousand trillion trillion.
That is 8 followed by 27 zeros.
8 Octillion in Numbers:
8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
If one were to count all of the grains of sand in the Sahara Desert, one grain at a time, after the last grain is counted, one second of eternity has yet to pass.
For the Believer in Christ
And so we will be with the Lord forever.
1 Thessalonians 4:17