The Passage of Time
I do not really love the time change. The week after it goes into effect, everyone is groggy. Trying to get all of us up and out the door is very hard! At the morning’s rotating breakfast table, my four children offer me different attitudes.
Some of my children are very tired and grumpy and have no problem grumping in my direction. Others of them are just quiet because they haven’t fully awoken yet. All of us are tired and I will confess to you that I have had a little more caffeine than average this week.
In the “What is the Bible?" Class last night, we looked up a few books in the Bible and read about who wrote them and when. As it happens, parts of the book of Exodus were written in the late 13th century BCE (or Before the Common Era/before the birth of Christ). That is a very long time ago! We do not have a precise date of course, just a general range. Even the newer books in the Bible, which we find in the New Testament, have a range where we suspect they were written, such as Paul’s letter to the Romans which was very likely written in 57-58CE (in the Common Era/after the birth of Christ) – still quite a long time ago!
Our pocket computers – that is to say, our phones – keep time in a very precise way for us. At any given minute, we can know the month, day and year, not to mention the exact time of day down to the second. It is rather impressive that we can know these things, because for most of human history we did not understand time in the same way. We just knew that there was daytime with some divisions (early morning, midday, evening) and then there was nighttime. And that was good enough, but we know time in a different way today.
But what do we do with our time now? We can know time’s passage more precisely, but this knowledge does not tell us how we ought to spend it. I don’t know about you, but I do suspect I waste too much of it.
All of this makes me think of two things. The first thing I think of, is Jesus saying to various people throughout the gospels, “The kingdom of God is at hand” as in the kingdom of God is right now, it is here. And the second thing I am reminded of is the great commandment to love God and love others. The combination of those two seems to be one of the better ways to spend whatever time we have been given.
We can spend our time arguing about political matters with strangers on the internet or we can offer to help a friend or neighbor who needs an extra set of hands with an unexciting task. We can bend our heads to endlessly scroll social media on our phones or we can put them down and spend a few moments in prayer with God before our next task. We have this gift of time and the question becomes how will we use it.
It is Thursday as I write this and the grumpiness of the morning has not quite subsided in my house. I suspect that by next week, we will have adjusted to this recent time change. In the meantime, my hopes for the rest of this week are that we treat one another with kindness and care. But really, that is my hope for all of us each week – so in whatever time we find ourselves, may we love one another in the moments we have before us.
