Infinity inextricably surrounds our finite experiences. We ought to be taught by the infinite tails that lie at our finite doorstep.
A linguistic friend once pulled this amazing piece of infinitude out of his pocket. By impromptu, he said, "Rye bread, salami and cheese from Denmark tastes great on sidewalk cafe's under umbrellas." He continued to remark that no one has ever said this finite set of 14 words before and no one ever else will. In that moment the finite was flirting with the infinite. Every sentence flirts; even this little one.
Examples, of this romance between the finite and infinite surround us. Fingerprints and snow flakes are mind boggling unique. A few notes in a western music scale have provided years of inexhaustible creativity. Often, ecstatic experiences come when time disappears. Finite time dissolves, in deep engaging conversation, an enjoyable thrilling ride or a grasped pure idea. The familiar Gaussian bell curve has infinite tails. In a giant upheaval, Leibniz and Newton sparked calculus into existence by observing infinitude in the instantaneous.
It is difficult to deny the perpetual longing for infinity. I remember as a young child being mesmerized in the simple mobius strip. What is the reason of this wonder? Why am I alarmed at a strand of gray hair? Why is an older woman often surprised at her aging body? C.S Lewis surmised,
We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. "How he's grown!" we exclaim, "How time flies!" as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal. 1
"if we find in ourselves a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. 2
The mathematical genius Pascal wrote,
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.3
The infinite blows our minds. We need to daily go here for worship. Souls are refreshed by wonder. If heaven is a continual further up and further in 4, our minds will spend forever perfectly exploring and forever worshiping with wonder.
