Time
December 10, 2023 at 12:00 a.m.
Second Sunday of Advent
“With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.”
A high school senior asked me earlier this week if college years go by as quick as high school. While I was in college, I thought about this question often, worrying that the quick pace of those years would be the pace that the rest of my life would continue. But I soon realized after graduation that this didn’t seem to be the case. I moved back home for a year and realized that. Without hesitating I responded, “Even faster.”
Life tends to slow down when you do. I was no longer a full-time student working three jobs, but I was a “real adult” working a 6-2 schedule, not sure what to do with my afternoons. The quiet was uncomfortable, but evidently necessary because my skewed understanding of rest and time began to heal.
As humans, we can’t seem to grasp the idea of time very well. Some days there is simply not enough time to get everything done and other days seem to drag on and we can’t wait to hit our pillows at night. Whether there is too much or too little of it, time always seems to be the enemy, never in our favor. But this can’t be true, because God created time. He knows that to live on Earth without time would create chaos in our hearts. That we would miss out on the gift of the moment, that we would fail to treasure beginnings, and that we would forget to rest and not know when or how to say, “It is finished”. But the best part about time is that it gives us a chance to experience eternity.
C.S. Lewis puts it beautifully when he says, “For the present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
After graduation, I spent a lot of my newfound free time sitting in Churches because it seemed better than sitting at home waiting for the rest of my family to get off work. It was during that year that time seemed to be the only thing I could give God, and He took it gladly. Sitting in Church, my time with God felt surreal. It truly felt like I had experienced an intimacy with Him that could only have been built over a thousand years, and yet the time to leave the Church always snuck up on me. It was during that year back home that I experienced eternity in a way that I could not relate to time.
And now I find myself sitting here still at work at 8pm and I’m forced to reflect on how I have been leading my life these past two years. Have I missed out on moments by living in my future tasks? Have I failed to treasure beginnings in grief of past things that had to end? Have I forgotten how to rest in fear of falling behind? Have I let time dictate my life and draw me away from God? Time is supposed to be gift from God, not a god in itself. This Advent is the perfect opportunity to stop giving time the power to rule our lives, but to run to the manger in relief that we can give over this time to Jesus.
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Second Sunday of Advent
“With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.”
A high school senior asked me earlier this week if college years go by as quick as high school. While I was in college, I thought about this question often, worrying that the quick pace of those years would be the pace that the rest of my life would continue. But I soon realized after graduation that this didn’t seem to be the case. I moved back home for a year and realized that. Without hesitating I responded, “Even faster.”
Life tends to slow down when you do. I was no longer a full-time student working three jobs, but I was a “real adult” working a 6-2 schedule, not sure what to do with my afternoons. The quiet was uncomfortable, but evidently necessary because my skewed understanding of rest and time began to heal.
As humans, we can’t seem to grasp the idea of time very well. Some days there is simply not enough time to get everything done and other days seem to drag on and we can’t wait to hit our pillows at night. Whether there is too much or too little of it, time always seems to be the enemy, never in our favor. But this can’t be true, because God created time. He knows that to live on Earth without time would create chaos in our hearts. That we would miss out on the gift of the moment, that we would fail to treasure beginnings, and that we would forget to rest and not know when or how to say, “It is finished”. But the best part about time is that it gives us a chance to experience eternity.
C.S. Lewis puts it beautifully when he says, “For the present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
After graduation, I spent a lot of my newfound free time sitting in Churches because it seemed better than sitting at home waiting for the rest of my family to get off work. It was during that year that time seemed to be the only thing I could give God, and He took it gladly. Sitting in Church, my time with God felt surreal. It truly felt like I had experienced an intimacy with Him that could only have been built over a thousand years, and yet the time to leave the Church always snuck up on me. It was during that year back home that I experienced eternity in a way that I could not relate to time.
And now I find myself sitting here still at work at 8pm and I’m forced to reflect on how I have been leading my life these past two years. Have I missed out on moments by living in my future tasks? Have I failed to treasure beginnings in grief of past things that had to end? Have I forgotten how to rest in fear of falling behind? Have I let time dictate my life and draw me away from God? Time is supposed to be gift from God, not a god in itself. This Advent is the perfect opportunity to stop giving time the power to rule our lives, but to run to the manger in relief that we can give over this time to Jesus.