Summer Time

You cannot set aside for yourself a good supply of time, stored safely to be used at your beck and call for one purpose or another. You cannot harness time, so that holidays are big and working days are small, the happy long and the unhappy short. You cannot “visit” another “time.” No matter how marvelously the writers of fiction invent “time machines” it is incomprehensible that reality, once ended can be reconstituted, or reality not yet created could be experienced.

In one sense time does not exist as a quantity; it is rather the way we describe a framework for the occasions and the seasons of our lives, and a way to organize events so that we can relate them rather than leave everything in one great heap in our memories. Some people think that they are able to control history by managing their time. For such people the turn of the seasons means a challenge to organize and assign the “when” for their desires and ambitions. One may control what one does, and allow a “time” for it to occur, but the passage of time is in no way affected. If your watch stops, time keeps right on passing.

“Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom…” (PS 90:12 KJV) or “Teach us how short our life is so that we may become wise.” (TEV) To be conscious of time gives us a perspective that other creatures do not possess, as far as we can tell. Time is something like an environment within which the events of our lives stand in relation to each other. We sense time. It is like an instinct that makes it possible to cope with both the past and the future, without losing our grasp on the present.

You don’t spend a year all at once. Life must be lived within a God-given set of sequences. When we “number” our days they become units of existence within which the meaning of God’s gift of life takes shape.

This as we enjoy the “hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer” we can also take time to take the measure of the months ahead. Try a few new things on for size. Think of it as a gift of God that needs to be spent to best advantage. Time can be your friend if you spend it well, especially this summer.

In the final analysis you will be spending it all, one way or another…

Pastor Jansen