WHAT TIME IS IT?

An encore blog post by Leona repeated by request

WHY ARE WE IN SUCH A HURRY? We have so many time-saving devices and conveniences compared to people in generations and centuries past that we should have a lot more time left over....for what?

We can waste time, invest time, pass the time away, kill time, find time, be on time, lose time, save time, and measure time. We can be short of time, out of time, there can be a convenient time, an appointed time, an acceptable time, and leisure time. People do time in prison. Some of us are in prime time. And there is a last time, a time of judgment, and a departure time for planes, trains, and people.

According to the Genesis record, our eternal no-time God established time at creation to measure the days with “Evening and morning were the first day....” Since that time, we who live on Planet Earth are subject to space and time. Sometimes we get impatient and think God is too slow to answer our prayers and would like to accelerate time. With King David we cry, “It is time for Thee, O Lord, to work...” God deals with us in our time zone in an orderly way. The Scriptures declare, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every purpose [event] under heaven. There is a time to give birth, a time to die, to plant, to uproot, kill, heal....” Twenty-eight time-events are listed that encompass all of life.

In His incarnate human body, although Jesus was the eternal Son of God, He was aware at certain times that His “time had not yet fully come” and later that “My time is at hand.” The devil was able to transcend time during his temptation of Jesus by showing him “all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.”

Isn't it incredible that God acts in the fulness of time and at the same time tells us to redeem the time? With our finite minds we don't really understand what time is nor do we know what time it is according to God's sovereign time schedule. We can't even use our five senses or apply the scientific method to experience time, yet we are subject to it. Time is invisible and illusive like the wind. We can only see the consequences of time in our face reflected in the mirror or in the world around us.

What is time? In an effort to explain it: Time is a dimension and measure in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of sequence, duration of events, and the intervals between them. Someone has said, "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once." Man differs from animals in that he is created with an awareness of the limited time in each day and in the human life span.

Since time began, temporal measurements have occupied scientists and philosophers, those who study astronomy, and those who navigate. In an effort to understand time, man studied the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the movement of the stars, the swing of a pendulum, and the beat of a heart. 

From pre-historic times, man has tried to divide the day in many ways: by using oil lamps, marked candles, sun dials, water clocks, sand hour glasses, eventually ingenious astronomical clocks. Mechanical clocks were not invented until as recently as 1275. Not until 1884 was an agreement reached on global time measurement and Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the international standard. Today we rely on atomic clocks for our most accurate measurements of time. The international unit of time, the second, is defined in terms of radiation emitted by caesium atoms. 

Clocks were originally only for public viewing of time. Eventually, when they were designed smaller, they came into domestic and personal use as pocket watches, then wrist watches—now we tell time on our cell phones. Who knows what kind of time measurement devices lie in the near future.

So finally we are able to measure time accurately. What have we achieved? We can't control time. We are at its mercy—we can't stop the clock, slow it, or reverse it. We were born in time and we age in time. Although we live in time right now, eternity is ahead. There must be such a thing as non-time, a time before it was, and in the book of Revelation we are told that there will be a time when time will no longer be.

Mortal bodies, our "earth suits," are subject to the corruption of earthly time. Our souls (spirits) are not. They are eternal. Our length of time on earth is ordained by God. Our souls are a treasure not subject to time which we are responsible to cultivate for eternity when God will give us spiritual "space suits."

MY TIMES

So generously

God gave me a measure

of time for my treasure

a slight slice

from an extended eternity.

If I embrace time selfishly

I lose it eventually.

If I surrender it entirely

to The Great Timekeeper

I find time for all

that is in the perfect will

of God for me.

My times are in Your hands, O Lord.

Each breath I take

each beat of my heart

like the tick of a clock

is a portion of eternity

minutes loaned by God to me

that I might redeem the time.

Fantastic thought!

God has chosen me

for this moment in history

actually destined me

to leave a mark for Him

upon some hearts

on this earth

as I pass through

this span of time

that is called

my generation!

“As for me, I trust in Thee, O Lord, I say, 'Thou art my God.

My times are in Thy hand....'”

Psalm 31:14, 15a

“For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it;

but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.”

Matthew 16:25