The wave is a circle stretched through time.

Imagine you’re holding a pen over a sheet of paper. You move this pen back and forth in a straight line — for example, up to the top edge of the page and then back down.

Can you picture it? Did your writing hand instinctively prepare to write, perhaps even grip an imaginary pen for practice? Did the muscles in your arm play through the motion? — Good.

Now imagine I sit down beside you. I reach for the sheet of paper, and I move it back and forth — crosswise to your pen movement.

So you’re drawing up and down, and I’m moving the paper left and right.

If we both perform our movements harmoniously and evenly, what figure would appear on the paper? Can you imagine it?

Correct!

A circle.

And with each round, the line of the circle grows thicker.

Good, and now imagine that instead of a single sheet, there’s a roll of paper in front of you.

You keep moving the pen up and down. But I turn a crank and pull the paper forward.

Now we’re no longer drawing a circle — but what?

Exactly right again!

A wave.

A circle is a nervous back-and-forth, performed with perfect harmony, and the wave is that circle stretched across time.

We know the verses from the book of Ecclesiastes (also called Qohelet), which note the recurring return of certain events.

Yes, read for yourself the entire first chapter; here, for example, the famous verse 9:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

So does the Bible describe a circular movement, as the wisdom of Asia does? Yes and no. It returns — and yet it moves forward.

We speak of the cycle of the year and the circle of the seasons. Your birthday, too, returns every year, as though your life moved in circles. Yet your age is one of many numbers reminding you that the world has indeed moved on. The wave movement you call your life has covered a certain stretch. But you and the world — you both have changed.

Indeed, it would be tragic, a sign of a futile and wasted life, if we truly moved in circles. If you can’t say what you learned last year, how you became wiser and kinder, where you loved your enemies and became a servant — then what have you lived for?

The Bible could hardly be clearer about this:

Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly. (Proverbs 26:11)

So once again, imagine you’re holding a pen over a sheet of paper. That’s what you and I, figuratively speaking, do every day — as long as we live.

Higher powers turn the paper roll forward, and what’s written is written forever. One day, your roll of paper will suddenly come to an end.

You cannot roll it back to correct anything. You cannot prevent your hand from trembling. You can only do your best not to stray off the paper — or tear it too soon.

You can only ask for higher wisdom, so that the waves you scribble may at least make sense in hindsight. (And then, if higher wisdom is given to you, follow it — otherwise your scribbles will remain just that.)

You write.

Life pulls the paper along. Your hand trembles, and yet you write. What is written remains — forever. But eventually: no paper left.

What have you drawn?