In an effort to understand time and space, it is almost unconceivable as to the ends of the universe. Certainly, as God himself is at the very making of the universe, he exists in the realms of the infinite and the timeless. Thinking about the boundaries of infinity, there is no tangible examples to use, unless it is in the mathematical model.
For example, using a line to illustrate infinity, we begin at "0" which represents the here, where you stand. Exending that line, out past the horizon, and not along the curve of the earth, but through the sky and into heavens, past the sun and the planets, past the stars and out of the milky way, past even the other galaxies, and alas beyond the farthest galaxy. Does the line end there. No. "There" is only the beginning. There may be other universes far beyond this one, ever expanding, ever colapsing. But how then does it all end. Does space end like the inside of a vast cave, and our line end abruptly at the wall. With or without such imaginary walls, the line continues, billions of times farther that the farthest universe, perhaps past other universes and beyond them as well.
And this is only a single line. Extend this line in both directions, then at right angles, so that a sheet is cast to infinity in all directions, then extend the plane both above and below itself again to infinity, in all directions. It is a vast space, this infinity.
Time is of a similar nature. How far can you imagine time. Back to the dinosaurs, back to the first single celled plants, back to the formation of the earth, back even to moment of creation, the "big bang". When did time begin? Extend that time line for billions of times before the big bang, was that also "time"? Certainly, that too is time, but how measured?
We measure distance and area, we begin first with a mark, a mark in space. Where you are sitting reading this is a good place to start. From here we measure up and down, left and right, forward and backward. We can start the measurement from here, or we could measure distances from Greenwich, England, or from the center of our solar system, or from the center of our Galaxy. But to measure any amount of space, there has to be a starting point.
Time is the same way. There is today, AM and PM, New Years, AD/BC, geological time, or that time measure from the Big Bang. Without some event taking place from which to measure time, how do we know that time has in fact moved at all. We use clocks to tell us, that despite whether anything else has changed or not, time has elapsed. But with no sun to change the night into day, with no calendar, no clocks, no movement of the planets, how do you know that time has moved. Sit there, alone, no visitors, no television or radio, no newspapers, no visitors, nothing but you and a chair in an empty room. Nothing changes ... ever. How do you know if it has been a day, a week or year. Not even your hair turns grey, you don't change. You can't count your heartbeats or breathing, because even those subtle little time keepers don't move. Nothing changes.
So how long is a day, with no way to measure the day. Certainly to God, a day is like a million years, perhaps billions, for He has been around for the billions of years before humans had any way to mark the begin of history.
So too, to God, is Space just as vast. All the universe, before known time is void, without form, there is no way to measure space and location of anything, because there is no unique spot in the universe from which to begin the measure of space.
Perfection is like that. The universe before known time was perfect in that it was a perfect void. All was sameness, empty. No event, not measurable by human means. The universe before any "stuff" was created was perfectly semetrical, because it was total empty, a perfectly semetrical void, without form. Perfect in a mathematical sense is the total absense of randomness. Perfect exists in voids, as well as pure infinite repitition. Purity is without particle or pattern other than the given pattern of the rest of the mass. Purity in mathematics is represented by an infinite string of "1" or a perfectly imperfect number like "pi" or "gamma". Change a single digit anywhere in the pattern, it is not longer pure, no longer perfect.
In art this same matematical purity is represented by the blank canvas. Just as the universe was pure but without form, so too is the artist's canvass pure and without form. What he is about to create remains in his own imagination, as God too, created the universe from his own image of what he dreamed it would be. But what makes the canvas beautiful, what makes the universe beautiful, is to alter the perfect, pure, yet empty nature of it, and cause it to become what it was meant to become in the mind of the creator.
There is a "perfection" represented by purity and innocense. There is a "perfection" of patterns, and numbers. But there is also the perfection of "completeness." To perfect (the verb) something is to complete it. So the canvas begins to be filled with the colors and hues as only the eye of the artist can visualize. The canvas and the oils are the matter of which the masterpiece will be made. But who can know by judging only the paints and cloth, what the canvas was intened to be?
The spirit, the worth, of a masterpiece is not in its weave of its canvas, or the oils of the paint. The spirit is in the vision that was placed on the canvas by those ingredients. Certainly, the spiritof the Universe is not in the gases and masses that composes it, but in the design that blends all these parts into one whole. So also is the spirit of mankind. We are yet flesh, skin and bone, canvass and paints, born pure and innocent as a canvas before an artist. It is not the nature of God to leave the canvas blank, but to draw upon it, to give it life and form, and to man, to give us a destiny. Gods paints upon this canvas of ours whether we believe or not. At times, we fight and resist what God has imagined for our lives, but he is always there, working the oils and pigments.
Even as our lives draw to a close as all lives do, God is still working with us, applying those finishing touches, giving us new challenges, new inspirations. And just as it is with the great masterpieces of art, when it is all finished, others look back at our lives, and in every stoke of the brush, every hue and shadow, ever corner of the canvas, is the masterpiece that God had envisioned for our life. Such masterpieces are inspirations to others, not of our own cleverness and talents, but in the miracle of what God can do with just a few pounds of flesh and bone. And when God looks back at what he has done, he can again say, "It is good."
In our stiving to be perfect, let us not ever loose sight that it is equally important to be perfected, to be the spiritual masterpieces which we were meant to become. It is more that just giving lip service to "Be all you can be," it is "Be Everything that God intended for you to become! Be complete. BE!"