We continue our new September series as we reflect on the Discipline of Time.
I was brought up to believe that it is a sin to be late. To cause others to wait for you, my parents taught us, is to steal from them one of their most precious commodities. Time is a creature—a created thing—and a gift. We cannot make any more of it. We can only receive it and be faithful stewards in the use of it.
“I don’t have time” is probably a lie more often than not, covering “I don’t want to.” We have time-twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week. All of us have the same portion. “If the president can run the country on twenty-four hours a day, you ought to be able to get your room cleaned” is what one mother said to her teenage son. Demands on our time differ, of course, and it is here that the disciple must refer to his Master. What do You want me to do, Lord? There will be time, depend upon it, for everything God wants us to do.
When we are in the midst of great busyness, we hardly think of kairos and see chronos only as hours that are flying by faster than we can count. It is when things are quiet that we become aware of minutes that tick slowly by. Then we have opportunity, perhaps, to think of their deeper significance in the light of eternity. . .
For the Christian, time is transfigured as we see it held in the love of God, created by and for Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the primacy over all created things and who existed before everything and holds everything together. We see the past as God’s continuous action in man’s history, giving him freedom to act, and the future as belonging also to Him and holding for us the hope of redemption. We are given the present within which to choose whom we will serve, knowing that this moment affects the next and we are accountable for it.
**Excerpt originally published in Joyful Surrender, p 94, 96