As the clock ticks toward a new year, one wonders if what many have been feeling has a cause: that time has “sped up.”

Have you felt that way? Are pages in the calendar blurring by?

Is it a product of simple aging? Or busyness? Imagination?

To many, it seems more pronounced since the pandemic, leading cultural observers to dub it the “2020 Effect.”

We’ve had articles through the years on a variety of “time” issues: the strangeness, often, of 11:11 on clocks (seeming to be observed in a pronounced way at meaningful times) and the even stranger hour of three a.m. (when many report paranormal, as well as religious, phenomena).

That’s because time is a funny thing — to God, meaningless.

In Heaven, it is said, there is no past, present, or future.

We can’t wrap our brains around that.

But back to the issue: Why would the hours tick faster due to covid? Have things really accelerated since 2020?

The explanation, from socioliogists and psychologists, is that during the lockdowns, time seemed not quickened but slower because there was so much less going on; folks were cooped up; they didn’t go to work, church, or school; there was limited shopping and socializing; and now that things are normal (with places to go and people to meet), time seems to have sped up.

Maybe. The plasma of time again bubbles.

“The pandemic caused a disconnection between measurable objective time and internally perceived subjective time,” says a paper published in the National Library of Medicine. “It is likely that changed routines and uncertainty about the future contributed to our distorted experience of the passage of time.” Try this test as far as perception of time.

(Below is from an article on just this topic in Vox🙂

Dizzying.

Noted a website called Well and Good last year, “Something has happened to time. It’s always been a bit tricky, flying by ‘when you’re having fun’ and crawling like between 3 and 6 p.m. on workdays (when you’re presumably not having fun). But ever since March of 2020, time has felt more slippery than ever. Maybe you’ve inadvertently referred to events that occurred in 2019 as having happened ‘last year,’ and everything that’s happened since as taking place in the same (strange) year. If time feels unusually distorted to you—whether by passing either super fast or achingly slow—you’re likely not alone.”

There is certainly the psychological explanation, although we heard much about time “speeding up” long before 2020.

Again: aging? As we age, less and less is new. As we age, there is more routine.

Yet, with retirement, should time not seem slower (as during the pandemic)? Certain folks even feel people are aging faster physically: getting older quicker.

If you want to get really technical, 2020 included the 28 shortest days since 1960 — that is, the earth’s rotation was slowed by a fraction too small for us to really comprehend. The shortest day of all came on July 19, when, says a website called Time and Date, the earth completed its rotation in 1.4602 milliseconds less than 86,400 seconds (in a normal day). You’re not likely to notice that!

In the mystical realm, there are those who believe the perceived acceleration of time is because God in His Mercy wants to get through the pain of chastisement faster. It is sometimes called “The Quickening.” In some religious or eschatological beliefs, “The Quickening” might be used to describe a period of intense change or upheaval, often associated with end-times prophecies or significant spiritual transformations.

“Every minute is of endless value and idle time was time for prayer,” says Future Events. “For life moved as a flash of neon. In our time, it has quickened.”

“Certainly God Himself ‘changes the times and the seasons’ (Daniel 2:21) as He sees fit,” says an evangelical site. “He is the one and only Sovereign God. He alone determines kings and nations and ordinances and times and seasons. So it is no surprise that His Word anticipates this time dilation, and perhaps acceleration. Interestingly, Scripture even informs us that the Antichrist ‘shall speak pompous words against the Most High, shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law…’ (Daniel 7:25).”

Is all the technology making things seem to go faster? Are our minds now so accustomed to instant this and instant that that we have changed our perception of “instants”?

During apparitions, seers at places like Medjugorje lose track of all time.

A minute seems like an hour, or vice versa.

“Time is short. Time is short.” That has been the refrain of prophets — referring to the imminence of events.

Is it short now in an actual way?

We think too of a recent alleged prophetic word that used the expression, “the future of your history.” (See story.)

Let that one roll a few times across your cerebral circuits.

[resources: Future Events: A Prophecy of Coming Times]