‘Time’ was the theme for the fireworks this year, so I had a think about time.
Do you feel a scarcity of time in every day life? Do you feel rushed? Almost 4 out of every 5 people in societies like ours feel continuously or regularly rushed for time. An author has called us the ‘wrist watch society’, because we feel we must know the time all the time!. Ever noticed how we talk of the ‘peak’ or ‘rush’ hour, the way we are always telling our kids to ‘hurry up’ or ‘get a move on’, and the way words like ‘urgent’ and ‘priority’ recur in business and family life. We are always trying to find the shortest way to get somewhere, the fastest way of doing something, the quickest way of contacting someone.
Most of us need to slow down, and know that time is in God’s hand. He is the maker of everything that exists, the creator of both space and time. Without him there would be no past, present, or future; no summer or winter; seedtime or harvest; no morning or evening. It is God that gives us the gift of time to think and act, to plan and pray, to give and receive, to work and rest, to strive and play, to love and worship.
Too often we forget that God is in control, and we take time for granted. Sometimes we view it as a commodity and ruthlessly exploit it (James warns of this person, James 4:13-14). We cram it too full or waste it, learn too little from the past or mortgage it off in advance. We refuse to give priority to those people and things which should have chief claim upon our time.
As our church thinks through what we will do this year with our time (woops– God’s time!), may I encourage you to pray to God for help. Ask God to enable us to realise that important though this life is, it is not all, and that we should view what we do in the light of eternity, not just our limited horizons. And he has prepared a time when we will have leisure to enjoy each other and him to the full.
Ask God that he might help us know our limits, take away any false sense of indispensability, sense of false ambition, and rather trust him, and give ourselves to the Lord’s work. For the times are in his hand! (Andrew).