A Bazillion Moments

The other day I was having lunch with a friend and I asked him, “Suppose God told you that He would let you know everything that is going to happen in your life in the next 40 years. Would you want to know?” We both sat there and thought about it for a few moments. Then he told me that he wouldn’t want to know. I agreed.

While it could be nice to know some of the coming events of our futures, to know the entirety of it all would make for a pretty boring life. It could rob us of the excitement, mystery, and beauty. It’d be like knowing that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time before you started the opening credits. And if you still haven’t seen that movie yet, I’m referring to “Look Who’s Talking.”

Lately I’ve been thinking about how complex our lives really are and how amazingly timed out some parts seem to be—how our lives are all made up of moments upon moments that somehow play out into a massive story. I’m sure you have stories that go something like, “And if I’d have been there just a few moments later, I would have missed it completely.” Or maybe, “They happened to be there at the exact moment I was.” You can call it chance or dumb luck, but I choose to believe that it’s far more intricate of a process.

All these millions and millions of instant moments that make up our lives come together and sync up with the bazillion moments of other people’s lives. Moments connect, and we find friendship, love, and opportunity at just the right time.

Let’s see if we can break it down in the most fun way possible: using math. As always, remember to show your work. Math is power.

We have 24 hours in a day.
60 minutes in an hour.
60 seconds in a minute.
7 days in a week.

24 x 60 x 60 = 86,400 seconds in a day.
86,400 x 7 = 604,800 seconds in a week.

If you’ve ever had to suffer through the play Rent, you probably know that a year has 525,600 minutes. Well, a year also has 31,536,000 seconds.

Most movies are shot at 24 fps, or 24 frames per second. Meaning that every second of a movie you watch is like looking at 24 pictures in a row. Let’s say that a moment is equal to a frame, so we have 24 moments each second of our lives.

31,536,000 seconds x 24 moments = 756,864,000 moments a year. So in a decade you have lived through over 7.5 trillion moments. That’s almost as high as the national debt so you know that’s a lot.

Maybe the numbers don’t do anything for you, but my mind has been blown thinking about it lately—how every single moment of my life has come together to bring me to where I am now. I honestly don’t believe it’s all been random. Life is too complex. The people I interact with are too complex. I am definitely too complex and weird.

I think God is a master editor. He’s looking at all of the instant moments of all of our lives and the lives of those we interact with, and He is somehow piecing them together at just the right time. He’s seeing the entire film strip of our lives and putting together a blockbuster. He’s going before us and following behind us and weaving it all together. It’s not by chance; it’s by highly intelligent design.

I know this can bring into question why bad things happen and free will and all that talk, but that’s for another time and for smarter minds than mine to explain. All I’m saying is that if you don’t want to know the next 40 years of your life, then you have no choice but to live day by day. Day by day trusting that your billions of moments aren’t out of control. And that the right things in the right time will come to you right where you are.

Don’t believe me? Wait a few moments.