Living Life in Chunks

I am quickly approaching another birthday. It’s funny how we think of getting older only on our birthday, like it happens only one day of the year. Really, I am getting older every second, but like most people, I live life in chunks.  We all divide up our days in nice neat sections; chunks of time. Big chunks like our 25th or 50th wedding anniversary. Yearly chunks, like when we become “a year older.” Or even smaller ones, like seasons, months, or week-ends. We even divide the days into “working hours” and “quitting time.”

Big or little, we see our time pass by in chunks.  The whole world recognizes many of them in the same way.   A week is seven days.  A day is 24 hours, no matter where you live.   The sun may not take the same track in the sky, but unless you live on another planet, a day is pretty much 24 hours.   Most of us agree on the calendar too.  In fact, we divide it into two really big chunks.   We have the years “BC” counting backwards, and then the years “AD” counting forwards.

More recently, the BC / AD convention has been called into question.  Folks don’t like what the “BC” and “AD” stand for, so they changed it.  They now call it “BCE” and “CE”.   The “Common Era” they call it.  Personally, I think it’s a bit laughable to change the name.  The dividing line is still the same, and no matter what you call the eras on each side of the line, we all still know Who the line is.  Isn’t it interesting how our calendar consists of two infinite chunks.   All of time stretching forever in both directions from a single point.  Eternity, divided by a birthday.