My Struggle With Time

I can’t believe it.  Calling on my best efforts and intentional watching, I am still struggling with the clock.  I seem to be living by it and I hate it. I awaken to constitutional duties, reading, devotional, meditating, glance at the clock and dread that I must be off to time-sensitive deadlines that have been driving my days for the last three or four months. I have so much designed and desired to accomplish that I embarrass myself when I realize I’m far, far behind my goals.  Is it my age?  Is it I’m physically and/or mentally challenged?  I’ve noticed myself more irritated than ever when an unexpected call comes in on my iphone. I feel some guilt when Bettyann calls to remind me of appointments or ask when I will be home for dinner.  I wish I was not bound to my clock set fifteen minutes ahead in my car, at my shop and the Seth Thomas, melodiously chiming out the hour and the half.  It’s just another sign that my every moment is synchronized and controlled.

In contrast to the "objective" measures of time marking seconds, minutes, and hours, there is this "subjective" experience of time being "fast or slow." Of late I’ve described my experience of time as passing with lightning speed.  One of my friends, laughingly said that I am finally catching up with the rest of my generation. Have I been that far behind?  I do recognize that weekends, especially Sundays, as ephemeral, while my work week plods slowly by with little accomplished (my good friend asks "compared to what?"—and yet both are marked by the same objective measurements of time.  How is it that my subjective experience of time is so different from what that fifteen minute lead setting on my shop clock objectively marks out for me, second by second, hour by hour?

Studying on it for the past few mornings; I’m finding the question of my subjective experience of time is one that the ancient philosophers and early Christian leaders pondered.  Their philosophical and theological musings have left  many perplexities regarding the human experience of time.  I read the other morning where Saint Augustine wrestled with the fleeting character of human temporal experience.  He suggests that no sooner do I apprehend the present than it has receded into the past.  He wrote, "We cannot rightly say what time is, except by reason of its impending state of not-being."

I confess of having real issues with the way I perceive and think about the nature of time, but I guess what I’m beginning to understand is how crucial for my life is the significance of events that are happening moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day. In pursuit I browsed: Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science & Religion by John Polkinghorne who wrote how theologians of all stripes have tried to understand the nature of time by what takes place in time—a narrative of unfolding events. These theological discussions seem to involve God's engagement with time.  Is God a wholly atemporal being, outside of time and history?  Or is God genuinely engaged with time and revealed through an unfolding story of historical disclosure?

It all get a little too “heady” for me but one thing that I do understand from experience is that the biblical writers give witness to a God who progressively unfolds saving acts within history.  The divine plan of salvation that Christians believe culminates in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ is called salvation history.  God did not, for example, reveal every aspect of salvation to Abraham or to Moses.  Instead, the biblical writers give witness to the God who works within and through the temporal events of history to reveal the plan of redemption.  Anyone can see this unfolding in God's commissioning of Moses prior to the Exodus 6: 2-3  "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai) but by my name 'the Lord (Yahweh)' I did not make myself known." Within the long ministry of the prophets, a God is revealed who gradually discloses what will take place.  Isaiah presents the God who "proclaims to you new things from this time; even hidden things which you have not known.  They are created now, and not long ago: and before today you have not heard them." Isaiah 48:6-7

For every Christians, God's decisive revelatory action in time is in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ which we just celebrated.  While there are many glimpses, sign-markers, and hints pointing towards a messianic redeemer in the Old Testament, ultimately God chose to enter a particular time as a human being to live life among the time-bound.

The significance of those time-bound events continues into my life time. And into eternity!  I’m more convinced than ever that through the unfolding of time, I can grow in my understanding of who God is and what God has done through Jesus, the Messiah.  I’m thinking that here in John 6 as Jesus spoke with his disciples, he suggests that there would be more to learn and more to reveal through the work of the Holy Spirit: "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.  But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears he will speak; and he will disclose to you what is to come."

I also believe that the witness of Scripture suggests that the events of my life reveals this ongoing work of the Spirit.  Sometimes, I do apprehend the significance of those events in the present time, but other times it seems only through the lens of my minds rear view mirror that I understand God's action.  While time moves quickly at times and slowly at others, while minutes and seconds and hours are filled with appointments, creating wood objects, napping, graduations, traveling, gardening, journaling, worship, fellowship and all the events that make up my time-bound existence, I would do well to look around to see how the Spirit of God is working through the ordinary events in the march of time. 

Father, God, as Your child and follower of Jesus I trust that I will never forget that Your Son entered time to enact the new creation of His resurrection.  As I grow in my understanding of that timeless act, the events of my temporal life acts as sign-markers for eternity.  And while I will continue to see the significance of my time-bound events "through a mirror darkly," the day will come when "all things are subjected to Him...that God may be all in all."  Amen