Hourglasses have been used for centuries to help keep time, but they are also useful metaphors for time itself. They are particularly useful, in fact, for illustrating the differences in time as we experience it as mortal creatures, and time as God experiences it as an eternal being. Time for us is like the grains of sand tumbling one after another into the bottom of the glass. Each moment, like each grain of sand is separate and distinct, the past piling up in heaps around us, the future uncertain where each new moment will land. But the glass itself is made up of sand. Sand that has been transformed, to be sure, but still sand nonetheless. The sand in glass, of course, is not separate or distinct but all flows together in one smooth continuum. With time piling up all around us, it can be hard for us to sift through all of the grains of sand and maintain the right perspective. But for God, time in all of its forms is as clear as, well, glass. “The same which knoweth all things, for all things are present before mine eyes;” (D&C 38:2). In fact, John also compares our eternal perspective to glass: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.” (Revelations 15:2). Right now as we are it can be hard to make sense of all of these loose grains of sand and moments that don't seem to always add up to anything that makes sense or is fair, but when we have finished our journey through the furnace of affliction and everything has melted together with fervent heat, then just like with our Heavenly Father, all things will flow together and be present before us and all that is unjust or unfair will fit together at last.
