Thoughts on Eternity and the Struggle Against Time

Perhaps it's a problem for humanity in general; perhaps it's just my culture, but we seem to struggle constantly with time.  More often than not we battle time: it seems there's rarely enough.  I know it's something I personally have difficulties juggling.

Have you ever stopped to think how odd that is?
I began thinking about it a week or two ago, and how perplexing it is that we should struggle so against basically the medium of our existence.

After all, we are born into time and thus come into the world with no prior experience; no knowledge of anything different.  And we grow up and live every day in the context of time, and eventually die in the context of time.  Odd that it should be so difficult.

Of course we know a technical meaning of time.  The planet spins and we have day and night.  It beats tireless circles round the sun and we have years.  But somehow I think time is more than just these natural movements, as though they are only markers for the passage of time, like the reading on a thermometer does not cause the temperature but merely proves it.  In the same way the cycles of day and night, fall and spring, winter and summer give meaning as markers.

And the cycles go on.  In Chicago, each winter we become re-acquainted with cold, and snow falls to grace a dead world.  Each summer the sun beats down, sometimes more gentle than others, and humidity rises and rain falls.  Each autumn turns summer's greens to brown, red and gold.  And of course every spring awakens the earth and brings forth life again—from one decade and generation to the next.
And still we fight the passing of time.

There's a verse in Ecclesiastes which says God "has set eternity in the hearts of men," and I've always considered it to mean solely our longing for something more; that humanity knows something is wrong and yearns for more.  C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity of our longing for another world as proof that such exists, his argument being that each human desire has a fulfilment.  Could it be that God literally set a sense of eternity in our hearts so time feels unnatural?

Maybe my imagination is just incapable, but I have a hard time imagining a world without any sort of time.  Perhaps time will still exist, but become mostly irrelevant relative to eternity.  Again, eternity is too large for my wee brain of earth to comprehend, but I have a few ideas of the implications.

But, not to inhibit your imagination, I'll let you consider the concept for yourself.  ;)