Have you seen the movie "Lucy"?  Almost by accident, I saw it a few weeks ago.  It tells the story of a woman (Scarlet Johannson) who receives extraordinary mental powers, so much that she is able to manipulate physical objects as well as look into the thoughts of a human brain.  As the plot unfolds, we see how Lucy herself becomes the object of intense study:  how could such a thing be?  She is questioned, she is examined, she is considered and discussed.  Yet no one can figure out why she is capable of such things.
     In addition, Lucy becomes the object of predation.  A team of international wrongdoers make it their aim to capture her and exploit her for their perverted ends.  At the end of the movie, all parties--scientists, wrongdoers, and Lucy--come together in a laboratory.  As the the wrongdoers close in, Lucy undergoes a stunning transformation, growing, in tree like fashion, limbs of knowledge and understanding to epic, almost ethereal proportions:  she dwarfs everything else.  Then she implodes, sending, as she promised the scientists she would do, everything into one flash drive for posterity.
     And Lucy is gone.  But she speaks.  She is everywhere, she says.  The only thing that matters, she adds, the only thing that really exists, she insists, is time.
     It's a interesting thought.  Is time the sole measure of reality?  Is time the only way to shape and determine what is real?  Consider the nature of the universe:  time and space exist together.  Absent a black hole, one cannot happen without the other.  No space, no real time; no time, no real space.
     Now consider the idea of eternity.  Above and beyond space and time lies eternity.  It is from eternity that all things have come, it is within eternity that all things find ground. Virtual particles notwithstanding, things do not simply pop out of nothing.  On its own, temporality cannot just "begin."  We need a continuous "present."  We need an eternity.
     Is time therefore the only thing?
     Maybe.  One day, however, even time, as we understand it, will cease to exist.  And at that point, what has been "here" all along, eternity, will be all that remains.
     Religion or not, we need more than time to have time.  Otherwise, life just could not be.
     Thanks, Lucy.