Time

 

Time

It’s almost Christmas... and I’ve been hearing the usual laments: “I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas again – already!”  “Where has the year gone?”  This week Australia Post delivered my new calendar for the new year.  My Canadian pen friend and I have been exchanging calendars with each other for several decades.  That way he gets to enjoy some Australiana and I some of the sights and scenes of Canada.  But every year it’s also another reminder of the relentless march of time.

We human beings have a somewhat ambivalent attitude to that which is marked – not only by clocks and calendars – but also by lunar phases and sunrises.  If we have too much time on our hands we quickly complain of boredom.  If we run out of time for any activity we soon whinge about our anxiety levels.


Perhaps it’s helpful for us to keep in mind that time too is a created reality.  That’s a concept that is hard to get our head around.  And by the way, it’s also a concept that we don’t hear discussed by evolutionists.  Their whole worldview is locked into that mix of ‘time plus chance’ – that supposedly made it possible for things to come into being – without having to take into consideration a Creator God.

Christians think differently.  They know time had a beginning... and that time will come to an end.  The beginning is mentioned in that Bible book of beginnings: Genesis.  “God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.’”  Paul spoke to Timothy about God’s favour being extended to us “before time began”.  And to Titus he wrote that God made promises “before the beginning of time’.  The Bible book, Revelation, pictures for us a scenario in which time will be no more.  That expression: “when time will be no more” has also found itself into some of our Christian songs.  For example, there’s the song: When the roll is called up yonder!  It begins: “When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more...!”  The reason I have trouble getting my head around these things is because I am, for the present at least, a creature of time.  I am bound up within time.

I suspect that King Solomon did quite a bit of thinking about ‘time’.  In Ecclesiastes 3 he writes that “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.”  And note well that he spoke about time-bound activities under heaven.  I assume Solomon knew that heaven is not bound by time constraints.  He then lists that well known mix of events that was popularised in my younger years by the folk singers: Peter Paul and Mary... and after them by The Seekers.  “A time to be born and a time to die... a time for war, a time for peace!”  And at the end of it all Solomon added, “He has also put eternity into the hearts of humans.”

The idea of God putting eternity into our hearts is a fascinating concept.  We are creatures who are time-bound.  We can’t escape our clocks and calendars.  Even if we chose to ignore those we cannot escape the continuous rhythm of sunrises and sunsets that mark the passing of our days, or the changing seasons that mark the passing of our years.  But could it be that God, having put eternity into our hearts, is what often makes us so dissatisfied with time?  It goes too quickly – or too slowly – depending on our circumstances.  Deep down we know we were made for eternity and many Christians have a kind of sub-conscious home-sickness for that ‘last day’ after which time will be no more.

Yes, Christmas is again rushing up... and so is the end of the year.  But isn’t it fitting that we should celebrate Christmas just before the end of the year.  Christmas is the story of the eternal God stepping into time in the person of Jesus?  He, the Son of God, took on the limitations of time in order to make possible our transition to eternity.  God loved us in Jesus from eternity past so that through faith in Him we might enjoy His presence in His new creation in eternity to come.  Knowing Jesus as our Saviour and Lord enables us to say with the Psalmist, “My times are in your hands”.

John Westendorp

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