Big Ben strikes midnight. Party-poppers are popped, champagne glasses clink, Auld Lang Syne swayed to for its annual outing.
Meanwhile, out in space, the Sun calls across the void to the Earth, “Congratulations, Earth! Another orbit done. Four and half billion laps gone, seven billion to go. You’re nearly halfway!”
Further out in space, the universe continues its extraordinary expansion. A year? Every planet has its own. Elsewhere, time is measured in the lifetime of stars and atomic vibrations.
Time is a matter of perspective. This cosmic view is awe-inspiring. But it’s also unsettling. So let’s hurry back home to Planet Earth, to a cosy hearth and perhaps a clinking glass, and importantly the people we share them with.
We begin a new year. What will it bring? Better or worse than last? How do we even measure this? What is important to us?
The year’s clocks are ticking. Super-accurate clocks are desired most now not by scientists, but by financiers. Each transaction in the bewildering world of international stock-markets is time-stamped to atomic-clock accuracy. Much money will be made and lost this year. For some, that will be their measure.
“I’ve a ticket to the moon. But I’d rather see the sunrise, in your eyes,” sang E.L.O. (decades before Elon Musk). We measure time not just in amount but quality – ‘kairos’ time, as the ancients called it, as opposed to ‘chronos’ (clock) time. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” writes the sage. “A time to plant, and a time to reap… a time to keep, and a time to throw away… a time to weep, and a time to laugh,” and most profoundly, “a time to be born, and a time to die.”
The Magi’s late arrival at the Christmas party is celebrated at Epiphany (Jan 6 th ). Men of the stars and of planet Earth, they brought timeless gifts. They treasured that moment and the Person they met. As we enter a new year, may we treasure each moment it brings, and know we are treasured by that Person for all time.
