Time, just some musings

Kudos to: Lisa for talking to me after she got off work even though it was late and she was tired; Anton for taking the time to call me last night out of the blue and talk; and Jake who is currently on a 36-hour bus ride from Santa Fe, NM to my hometown in KY to see me. (Now that’s sacrifice!) Thanks all, I feel loved! I’ve realized that when people go out of their way for me, and/or just want to connect with me, usually through conversation, I feel most appreciated. It’s as though the person is letting me know, hey, I talk to you because I value your ideas and thoughts, I ask you questions because I am genuinely interested in you and who you are, I want to spend time with you because you are fun or helpful or comforting or intelligent or…. When people take such a direct interest in me, I feel challenged to do the same, to show those I care about that I care about their being, and that they are more important than my own agenda, my own time.

Speaking of which… what, then, is time? ..... This topic began to captivate me a long time ago, and has recently been at the front of my mind due to a conversation with Deborah as we flew to Alaska together, and now due to the sermons I’ve been listening to at church. I reflected after my discussion with Deborah over 2 months ago that we as humans treat time as an inexhaustible resource. We have these colloquial phrases, like “spending time,” or “wasting time.” How can time be spent or wasted, as though it were currency or food? Yet we continue to think of time in terms of using, taking, seizing, and then losing, giving away, spending forever. The moment passes and in passing becomes past, old, no longer new. Can I ever savor time? Perhaps that is what eternity is all about, for time cannot exist (at least in the same state) in eternity. Time for humans is realized only because of death, a loss, a division, a separation, akin to sin. Death was the progeny of sin, per se, and thus time marks off the passing away of things- the death surrounding us. Yet death also abolishes that which has been corrupted (by sin). Time is known to us because of death, and is that which is lost, out of sight, no longer grasped, outrunning our memories and robbing them of the good no longer graspable. I cannot dwell in a moment, grasp it, nor savor it, for the moments are whizzing by and cannot be taken, and even my mind cannot contain them all. This feeling, of the ungraspable nature of time, and thus the impossibility of grasping the good and the true and the lovely moments of life, is but a shadow, a fallen, corrupted version of that was meant to be. Thus, perhaps in eternity, the good and true and lovely, the moments that we often define our lives by, are no longer moments, no longer fleeting, but reside and dwell and hang around to be reflected on, savored, enjoyed a million times over. For then, the good always is and is ever new! For what is new only has meaning by virtue of what is old and has passed, but if the old can no longer be made or come about, the new shall never pass! Truly, the old is gone and the new has then come!

Last Sunday at church, Pastor Roukas was preaching on the Upper Room discourse, from John 13. He reflected on other passages throughout the Gospels in which Jesus continually would say, “My time has not yet come…” It is not until John 12:20-23 and seen again in John 17:1 in which Jesus proclaims, “the time has come.” Paul reflects in Galatians that “in the fullness of time God sent His Son…” This is what I learned from what Pastor Roukas taught on: Jesus was clearly operating under the knowledge that his life was unfolding under the Father’s time table. He was confident that no one could interfere with the time of His Father. He was thus free to be bold, and able to resist pressure. Yet I operate too often on my own time table, and thus my soul will be disturbed because I do not know God’s time table. I may feel the pressure to get a job, or go to grad school, or get married, but these things are all foolish to try and orchestrate according to my own desires and my own timing… I need to wait for the perfect unfolding of God’s timing. Otherwise, yes, my soul will be disturbed, I will find myself downcast and cast down. What a liberating thought, for “My times are in Your hands, O God,” and what a liberating phrase!

And now for a random quote from Chad: “Lite Bright… it’s one big 4-hour post-it note.”