Jan 2024. Blues Vol 40 No. 1

DARYL LOTT
daryl’s deliberations
Time, God’s Most Precious Creation
“In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth.” The
phrase “In the beginning” reveals
God created the physical universe
with a “when” to start the
cosmic clock ticking. God is outside
creation and, therefore, outside
of time, a created dimension.
Time, in real life, not sci-fi,
flows like a river in linear fashion
from the past to the future.
The river of time leaves in its
wake a great sea that we call
“history.” In that great sea, there
are islands which crave our
attention. Mystery shrouds some
islands because their former inhabitants
left no written records
of their societies. Historians call
the era before written language
“prehistoric.” That era varied
from island to island. Other islands
in the great sea left remarkable
written records to tell
of their long-gone inhabitants’
exploits. Regardless of their
ability to read
and write, our
ancestors seemed
preoccupied by
time and the preservation
of their
memories.
Some of the
earth’s greatest
enigmas are
presently entreating
us to explain
them. We study
the Salisbury
Plain in England
and its great stone monuments
we call “Stonehenge.” There are
many competing claims about
its purpose, but all claims agree
that the structure marks time.
The same can be said of the Pyramid
of the Sun in Teotihuacan,
Mexico. The Pyramids of Giza are
connected to the immortality of
the pharaohs and the nighttime
skies. Apparently, nobody wants
to be forgotten.
Which brings us to our own
little timeless islands of remembrance.
The last year and a
half has been a journey for my
grandson, Lincoln, and me. We
visited more memorials than I
could count. We visited museums,
libraries, battlefields, and
archives in a bid to research and
explore some of history’s islands.
Lincoln is only eleven years old,
but he can read and retain college
level history textbooks. He
learns about our connections
DARYL LOTT
to the past and how the past
is relevant to the present. One
thing we wanted to do was visit
cemeteries as these places of
memory are common. We visited
multiple cemeteries, but there
was one that included a nightly
salute to the honored dead.
Gettysburg National Cemetery
is one of our nation’s primary
focal points in time. The cemetery
served the little town for
decades when
two massive
armies collided
there for
three bloody
days in 1863.
Musket shots
and artillery
damaged the
cemetery,
then one army
retreated to
the South after
losing an infantry
charge
124 The Blues - January ‘24