I happen to have a “significant” birthday this week. It has set me to thinking about time.
Time is one of God’s more paradoxical gifts. In every day we each have an equal amount of literal time, but we also each have a different length of lifetime. On the one hand, we seem to worship youth, and jeer at each other for turning older, while on the other, we hope for long life, feeling greater loss for those lives cut short too early.
Yet, the voice of Ecclesiastes notes, “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). How interesting it is that though God desires for us ultimately to live in eternity, we begin our lives here, within the parameters of finite time.
We have such ambivalence about time. We lament that “time flies when we’re having fun,” while it hangs heavily upon us when we’re not. Perhaps this is a sign that time is not our native habitat! Yet, while we did not create time and cannot change its steady progression forward, we somehow feel a certain ownership of “our” time and deeply resent when we find it wasted.
No matter how zealously we guard our schedules and how pro-actively we monitor our health, time remains God’s province. It is a divine gift, yes, but more than that, it is the Lord’s construct for enabling us to prepare for eternity. Over time we figure out which roads are dead ends and which propel us forward, and which relationships bring us pain or joy. If we take time to reflect on our history, how often do we find that in time lost, or interrupted, or even found unexpectedly, we learn so much about ourselves? In the twists and turns of time, God is forever leading us not only to discover our true selves, but also to acquire the supplies of character we will need to appreciate the eternity the Lord has made us to enjoy.
How wonderful that on this birthday I know to be grateful for the course my journey has already run – bumps and all – and for the adventure ahead that beckons. Better still is knowing, even as candles get added, I’m not running out of time. Eventually, when God does call “time out,” it will only be to usher in the best “times” of all.
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