How many of us are not here?
We may right now think about the
difficulty we had getting here. We may think about something bad or something
very good that happened this past week. Our minds may already have moved on to
the next thing we have to do, whether this afternoon, tomorrow, or this week.
We have a list of things to do, and even now, we think of ways to get them
done.
Regardless of what timepiece you
carry, it is clear that we live in a world obsessed with time. Rarely do people
sidle up to you in the grocery store anymore and ask, "Do you have the
time?" because everyone has it attached to their body in some way. We have
multiple apps for tracking our calendars, managing our deadlines and even
timing our walk to the office. We have time staring at us from the corner of
our computer screens, from the dashboard of the car and from the digital clock
on the bank sign down the street. If you live in a city, you might even look up
and see a classic old clock fixed on a historic building that has been marking
the time for generations.
In some cities, in fact, telling
time is literally a big deal. If you are in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for example,
you cannot help but see the Abraj Al Bait Towers clock just about anywhere you
go. Its clock face is 43 meters in diameter, roughly the size of a luxury
yacht, built on a tower that is 601 meters (almost 2,000 feet) tall. By
comparison, Big Ben, arguably the most famous clock in the world, is just over
6 meters in diameter on a 96-meter-high tower on the bank of the Thames. Other
cities around the world have similar "big time" clocks to help residents
and visitors track the time, some even assisting with chimes or bells when the
clock strikes the hour.
You would think that the plethora
of clocks in our world would make us better at managing our time, but the truth
is that time management is one of the biggest stressors in our culture. We work
too many hours, we have too many distractions, and we are trying to squeeze in
more work in less time. Procrastination is often the result of being so
overwhelmed with tasks that we keep putting things off, only to find that we
are now even more squeezed for time.
The relentless ticking of the clock
(or, in their case, the movement of the shadow around the sundial) is what the
ancient Greeks referred to as chronos time, from which we get
"chronological" time. If you buy an expensive watch today (either to
tell time or to make a fashion statement), the jewelry store will likely refer
to it as a "chronograph." It keeps the time that we are always
tracking, managing and running out of.
I hope that in the midst of all
these thoughts, you will allow me to ask you a question. Why should we waste
our precious time on something like worship?
In our busily engaged world, we
might tempt ourselves with thoughts that we need to keep moving, keep busy,
refuse to reflect upon our lives, and redeem the time.
Philosophers like St. Augustine
have reflected upon the puzzling nature of time. I like Science Fiction movies
that play around with our experience of time. That reminds me; Albert Einstein
once said that the only reason for time is so that everything does happen at
once. The philosopher and comedian Steven Wright said, in the dry humor of his,
“I Xeroxed my watch. Now I have time to spare.” He said he took a course in
speed waiting. Now, he can wait one hour in only ten minutes.
Our Christian faith -- along with
the underlying Jewish tradition -- offers a marvelous tool for figuring out how
to redeem the time. It is so important that God devoted one of the 10
commandments to it. It is, of course, the Sabbath. A wise teacher from the
Jewish tradition, biblical scholar Abraham Heschel, has this to say about what
a wondrous gift from God the Sabbath is:
"Time is like a wasteland. It has
grandeur but no beauty. It's strange, frightful power is always feared but
rarely cheered. Then we arrive at the seventh day, and the Sabbath is endowed
with a felicity which enraptures the soul, which glides into our thoughts with
a healing sympathy. It is a day on which hours do not oust one another. It is a
day that can soothe all sadness away. --Abraham Joseph Heschel, The Sabbath
(Macmillan, 2005), 20.
Paul
actually kept a running clock in his head, but, instead of tracking the
chronos, Paul was far more interested in redeeming the kairos.
Kairos is the brand of time most
often mentioned in the New Testament. You will not find it on the hands of the
dial or the digital numbers on a screen. Instead, kairos refers more to a
decisive time -- the right time, the appropriate time. The writers of the New
Testament seem to understand kairos in relation to the moment when God
intervenes or is about to intervene in human history. However, the word can
also mean the time that God's people have to prepare for the ultimate kairos,
thus Paul's admonition to the Ephesians to "[make] the most of the time
[kairos] because the days are evil" (v. 16).
It is that kairos expectation that
should fuel the management of our chronos. I invite you to pause with me for
just a moment, before we go any further.
I want you to meet Randy Hofman. He
is an artist — a sculptor dealing in primarily religious themes. He created
monumental works such as “Christ on the Cross,” “The Last Supper,” “Jesus
Praying” and “David and Goliath.” He creates sculptures out of normal beach
sand and seawater. An ordained minister since 1985, Hofman now earns his living
as an artist and views his sand sculptures as his ministry.
Sand sculpting is a purposely temporary and fragile art form. Here today, gone tomorrow, taken by tide, rain, or wind. Obviously, he does preserve his art in photos, but what he created is gone. The impermanence of sand is part of the magic, part of the beauty. Most of us, however, devalue the temporary. If something does not last, or have staying power, it does not have value. We want durability, sustainability, strength and endurance — whether we are talking about our marriage, our washing machine, our job, our car, our family or our God. We value things that last. We cling to the permanent, perhaps because, deep down, we know that human life is a sand castle before a coming tide.
Sand sculpting is a purposely temporary and fragile art form. Here today, gone tomorrow, taken by tide, rain, or wind. Obviously, he does preserve his art in photos, but what he created is gone. The impermanence of sand is part of the magic, part of the beauty. Most of us, however, devalue the temporary. If something does not last, or have staying power, it does not have value. We want durability, sustainability, strength and endurance — whether we are talking about our marriage, our washing machine, our job, our car, our family or our God. We value things that last. We cling to the permanent, perhaps because, deep down, we know that human life is a sand castle before a coming tide.
One movie that played around with
time was The Curious Case of BenjaminButton (2008), about a baby born old, placed in an old folks home, and
increasingly gets younger throughout the movie.
For what it's worth: it's never too
late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time
limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no
rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make
the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel
things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of
view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I
hope you have the courage to start all over again."[1]
No comments:
Post a Comment