Time Before and After

Sudden in a shaft of sunlight

Even while the dust moves

There rises the hidden laughter

Of children in the foliage

Quick now, here, now, always —

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

- Burnt Norton, Part 1 of Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot 

I contemplate the vast stretch of time, 

Stretching infinitely into timelessness, before and after

He is the Word, and "He existed before me".

I myself was born into this world merely a few years ago,

While He watched me awaken into consciousness of this world,

(Who knows if I had ever been conscious in heaven, 

When I was but a thought in the mind of God)

And He watched me learn about Him,

And learn to love Him.

And here at the present moment, in the twenty-first century,

I idly wonder, if after all of this, my words will have the poignant look

Of words that had never been read.

I write all these thoughts to you, O Word,

And in writing to you, you free me from that fear

Of being forgotten forever by all but you

Time moves on relentlessly in its inexorable march towards eternity:

In a hundred years I will not be around anymore

In a thousand years none of this will ever matter,

(Houses, careers, money, achievements)

Except the Word and the love we bore for Him

And our brethren

And I amidst this vast stretch of time, 

Stretching infinitely into timelessness, before and after