A couple of months ago, Parke County – in Indiana, opened a time capsule that was buried in the ground back in 1974.

Below, is a photo shared by Jeff Gooch – Funeral Director of Gooch Funeral Homes – posting a picture of his father, with the following caption:

“This was my dad (Larry Gooch) putting the final touches on the time capsule for the Rockville Sesquicentennial in our backyard in July of 1974. When we arrived at the courthouse we were greeted by many of our townspeople waiting to place items inside. Gene Swaim from Rockville Vault and Monument Company placed a granite marker for future generations to see and remember the location. It is at the south end of the steps on the west entrance of our courthouse. Note the bumper sticker on his truck-it says Rockville Sesquicentennial July 2-6. I remember everyone in town had a sticker on their rear bumper. This time capsule is to be opened this year for our centennial celebration.”

The time capsule was successfully opened on July 27th of this year…

Wherever one time capsule is opened, another is sealed.

Thus, because my church is in Parke County, I’ve been asked to write a letter to my church – Dailey Chapel Christian – for the next time capsule that will be buried this week, and opened 50 years from now.

The following letter is what I’ve submitted to the future…

_____________________________________________

To the People of Dailey Chapel Christian Church in 2074:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I have no way of knowing who will be reading this (if I did, that would be really spooky). Do they still use that word “spooky” in 2074? Just curious. The truth is, there might not be anyone reading this. But I hope that some of the younger people in our church will be around to pull this out of the ground one day… little Lilie Lou or Scarlett Dickey… any Nepotes – Leila or Raegan… Nora or Tate Metheny… Daniel or Joe Lunsford… Maizee with the big smile, or little Sylvie… Henry, Jack, or George Overpeck… any of the Simmons kids – Evie Lou, Charlie, or Conway… any Haltom’s… Carson Cox – are you out there somewhere? I hope so.

It’s a crazy world we live in, and 50 years is a long time. One thing, that I’m pretty sure about, is that I won’t be around. But I’m ok with that. I know where I’ll be going. If I was still alive, I’d be 95 by then, and although it’s not impossible, it’s also not very likely. However, my beautiful bride Lynell (Nelly) is two years younger than me – and she’s a lot healthier and has really good genes, so perhaps she’s still kicking around down there. Please look her up, tell her I love her, and I’ll see her again soon.

Sorry… that might end up being a lot of work for one of you lucky listeners. It’s not every day that someone gets a chance to write a letter to the future, so I have to make good use of the opportunity.

In any case, I’ve been the Preacher/Minister/Pastor for Dailey Chapel for about 9 years now, and it’s been one of the most challenging, but also happiest times in my life so far. I’m glad to be the one writing this letter. And I suppose it’s my duty to impart some words of wisdom from the past, or at least come up with something clever to say, so here goes…

Disclaimer: This is one of the sermons (a revised version of it) that I preached for Dailey Chapel a few years ago (in 2021) and something I’ve used several times for funerals I’ve presided over… It’s one of my personal favorites. And it’s about the very thing you’ve all gathered together to commemorate this day: TIME.

On September 14, 2015, at exactly 5:51am Eastern Standard Time… Physicists from the Massachusetts and California Institutes of Technology were able to catch something in a very large net that had been traveling through space at the speed of light for 1.3 billion years.

A hundred years earlier, Albert Einstein had invented a bunch of math jargon to describe the existence of something he called gravitational waves. In his mad-genius sort of way, he speculated that when objects in space collide with each other, they create ripples the same way a rock does when thrown into a lake. Einstein was convinced of this, but he never thought it would be possible to prove. As it turned out, he was right about the existence of the waves. But he was wrong that it would never be known for sure.

In the mid 90s engineers from MIT and CALTECH began building two giant observatories to prove his theory. These facilities – one in Louisiana and one in Washington State, took several years to complete, but once activated, they worked in tandem to a create a digital net almost as wide as the Louisiana Purchase to try and catch and record the waves that Einstein had talked about.

And that is exactly what they did. They caught, measured, and tracked a series of gravitational waves passing through their net in 2015. When traced back to their origin point, it was discovered that 1.3 billion light years away from Earth, two giant black holes had slammed into each other, releasing a tidal wave of energy that exploded outward, and sent ripples in all direction. 100,000 years ago, that energy crossed the threshold of our galaxy The Milky Way and proceeded toward our solar system until passing harmlessly through our planet 9 years ago (9 years, as I write this letter).

Now, to help you visualize the amount of distance we’re talking about… It would take a human being 37,200 years to travel 1 light year through space. The gravitational waves detected in 2015 had traveled 1.3 billion light years to reach us. The universe we live in is SO BIG – that they don’t measure it with miles or kilometers – they measure it with TIME.

The light from our own Sun takes about 8 and half minutes to reach us. That means, if the Sun burned out and went dark or disappeared somehow – we wouldn’t know it until 8 and half minutes later. That means, when astronomers look at the sun through a telescope, they are seeing it the way it was 8 and a half minutes in the past.

The light that comes from the next star over – Proxima Centauri – takes a little over 4 years to reach us. So, if there was an alien in that star system looking at us through a telescope – they would be seeing us the way we were 4 years ago.

Information like this boggles the mind. We can barely fathom these vast distances, and the amount of time it takes to traverse them. And what does it mean? Does it even matter? Yes. It does. It matters, because this is one of the ways that our Lord shows us how great and powerful He is.

King David said it best — ”By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. ⁷He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses. ⁸Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the people of the world revere him. ⁹For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” (Psalm 33:6-9)

There’s a well-known theological concept called Natural Revelation. And although this is a concept that is touched upon in many places throughout the Bible, it is most clearly articulated by the Apostle Paul in Romans 1:20 – where he says that:  “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

In other words, he’s saying that when we look at everything around us – everything that God has made, we are looking at things that God has provided as evidence of His existence. So, whether we’re looking at the smallest of things right in front of us, through a microscope, or the very largest of things millions of miles away, through a telescope – all of it, reveals something about the One who created these things.

Moreover, Paul is also saying that this is an obvious truth. It’s common sense. To suggest otherwise is the very definition of foolishness. As King David once said at the beginning of Psalm 14 and Psalm 53, “it is the fool who says in their heart, ‘there is no God.’” –That’s actually the same Psalm. It’s in there twice.

Now Paul, also, in his letter to young Titus – warns him to not be prideful about his belief in God. He tells him in Titus 3:3 that, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.” That’s Paul’s way of telling his protégé that the only thing separating us from the foolish – is the fact that we have fallen on the mercy of God. He’s reminding Titus that it is through love and humility and kindness that we demonstrate God’s mercy most clearly to those who have not accepted it.

If I tell someone that there is a God who loves them, in our culture, they probably won’t believe it. But if I tell them that God loves them, and I back it up by showing them that I love them too – THEN they might actually believe it.

But still, it’s not enough for people to know that we love them. We’re human beings. Our love is imperfect, and inconsistent, and flawed. And that’s why we have to point people to God whose love is perfect, and unwavering, and unparalleled.

So, that means we have to be patient with people who don’t believe the same things that we do. And in the meantime, we have to find ways to show them God’s love and mercy. We ourselves, have to ‘wait upon the Lord,’ and ask Him to use us – to lead us into the right situations and give us the right words when the time comes. And sometimes it’s hard to be patient. Sometimes it’s really difficult to wait for other people. But patience is one of the ‘fruits of the spirit,’ that Paul talks about in Galatians 5, and elsewhere.

We always want things to happen when we want them to happen. We want things to happen in our time. But God has his own time.

Now of course, when the Apostle Paul was writing about Natural Revelation he didn’t have microscopes or telescopes to see all the things that we can see today. But every advancement in science and technology that has come along since has only proven the concept of Natural Revelation even more. The more our technology allows us to see and observe, the more God’s immense power becomes visible. His fingerprints are all over the universe and everything in it.

And with this in mind, I’ve been taking some time, to go back to the Beginning of the Bible, into Genesis, so that we can do a little review on the 6 Days of Creation. What can we learn about God, what can we learn about ourselves, what can we learn about Christian faith from examining the Days of Creation through the lens of Natural Revelation?

For this message, I want to focus on something that God created on Day Four. So let’s take a look at that passage – Genesis 1:14-19.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, ¹⁵and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

When we read through these verses we see the words ‘govern,’ and ‘separate,’ used in repetition. These words are both related to the idea of organization. God was organizing his creation under the canopy of time, and using the sun, moon, and stars to do it – he says it right there in verse 14, “let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.”

The top researchers and scientists, and physicists in our culture (the ones that do not believe in God) explain away all the other things that exist in the universe – they have theories like evolution and the big bang that allow them to mentally evade the idea that there’s a God. But they haven’t been able to do that with TIME. They have no theory that allows them to provide an alternate reason for where time comes from. They can’t explain time.

The existence of time does not fit into any kind of scientific framework that currently exists. One of the most well-known physicists since Albert Einstein, a man named Richard Feynman – Richard Feynman was the George Washington, the Jimi Hendrix, and the Michael Jordan of physics all rolled into one. Any college student studying physics and space and time has to read his books and lectures. He’s considered to be one of the most brilliant minds ever on the subject – THAT GUY – back in the early 60s, when asked about the origin of time, basically said: I don’t know.

Most of the people who are considered to be experts in the field of physics today, with all the technological tools and more collective knowledge at their disposal than ever before – the kind of people who built those observatories to catch gravity waves in Louisiana and Washington – they basically scratch their heads when it comes to figuring out why time exists.

The scientists and the mathematicians don’t do well with the concept of time. As the Psalms of King David have shown us – it’s the writers and the poets that explain time much better. Time makes good material for poetry, and storytelling, and classic rock and roll power ballads.

My favorite non-bible author J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote: “Time all things devours. Birds, beasts, trees, flowers. It gnaws iron, bites steel, grinds hard stones to meal. It slays kings, ruins towns, and beats high mountains down.”

One of my favorite songwriters Roger Waters wrote some beautiful words on the subject of time: “You run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”

Our culture is obsessed with time. Just think about all the phrases we have to describe time in different ways:

All in good time.

In the nick of time.

From time to time.

We’re living on borrowed time.

It’s a matter of time.

Time out. In time. Time flies. Time to go.

About that time.

Take some time. Make some time. Kill some time.

Once upon a time.

There’s Adventure time. A Wrinkle in Time. The Land Before time.

Hot Tub Time Machine.

Snack time. Dinner time. Summer time. Double time.

Hang time. High time. Game time. Face time.

Prime time. Local time. Real time. Record time.

Quality time. Screen time. Quiet time.

Miller time.

Big time. Small time. Nap time. Space time.

We keep time. We spend time. We lose track of time.

No time flat. No time to waste. Some other time. Make up for lost time. Now is the time.

Hit me baby one more time.

We can obsess ABOUT TIME all we want. But time cannot be controlled. It cannot be solved by a math equation. There is no end to its ability to baffle scientists. There is no end to its ability to inspire artists, poets, and writers. And whether you’re from the countryside or you’re a city dweller – you cannot escape the clock.

Time is the great transformer of things. It changes ALMOST everything. It dissolves things that we think are solid. It moves things that we think will always be there. It destabilizes, shakes, and decays everything around us. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be bought. It cannot be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. And, eventually, it will take every one of us by the hand and walk us into the grave.

Despite all the terrible things that time does to us – it is still a precious gift from God. God created it for us. And God saw that it was good.

The reason it stings us the way it does – is because it is one of those things that REMINDS us all, that WE ARE NOT GOD. It reminds us that we are powerless, we are fallen, and we need someone to save us.

The good news is that someone has saved us. His name is Jesus, and he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

The Bible tells us that we are not like the rest of humanity that has no hope. Why? Because we have a King who is Master over the Grave. Our God is Master of Time itself. He created it. It has no power over him. And as Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.”

He is immoveable, he is unstoppable, he is our only hope out of this mess, and he is the one who makes all things new.

Heaven and earth will pass away – just as I have passed away. But the words of Christ will never pass away. Call out to him today, ask him to speak to you.

In Christ’s Love,

Adam Joseph Coffman

September 11, 2024