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Psalm 90 We worship a God who is outside the boundaries of time.
So why do we feel so enslaved by clocks and calendars?
Time is on our side?
It has been suggested that our checkbooks are theological documents, reflecting our faith and our priorities. If that is true, then our calendars are at least as revealing. How we spend our time — indeed, how we view time — has profound spiritual implications.
Consider the working couple, struggling to find time for one another in the midst of dual careers. Or the mother who spends frazzled days carpooling her children from activity to activity, all the while lamenting that her family “never eats dinner together anymore.” Or the executive wondering how best to spend his retirement years — should he throw himself into meaningful volunteer work, or has he “earned the right” to travel and enjoy himself? Consider the woman actively discerning “God’s plan for her life” — at age 83. And pastors ministering to the chronically busy, who are busy and stressed out themselves.
This series of Bible studies will explore Scriptural perspectives on “timely” matters — ranging from Sabbath-keeping to multitasking, from the gift of the present to the mystery of end-times. God’s relationship to time seems a logical place to start.
'Years... are like yesterday'
Psalm 90 reminds us that God exists outside time: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (v. 2). Genesis 1 suggests that our way of measuring time didn’t even exist until God created it — light and dark, days and nights, the earth turning on its axis and journeying around the sun.
This image of God may inspire awe and even comfort, but it does not provide much practical advice for living. Later in this series we will look at how Jesus experienced time. But even Jesus in his humanity also was “in the beginning with God,” and thus not bound by the limitations of human time.
'Teach us to count our days'
I remember once after a particularly challenging day of hiking with my husband in the Rocky Mountains, coming back to the campsite with three overwhelming needs: a hearty meal, a good shower and a long nap. I felt paralyzed, since choosing one would mean postponing two other things that felt just as essential!
As a pastor, mother, spouse and friend, I often have days that feel like that post-hike experience. Many of us, regardless of the roles we juggle, find it difficult to assess what is the next right thing. If we tend to one area of our life, others must wait.
Time management resources suggest identifying inessential time-wasters and letting them go. The thinking is, if harried folks would be more selective, they would find more than enough time for the things they truly need to do — those things that give their lives joy and purpose.
I find this advice simplistic and unhelpful. Most members of my congregation have already separated the wheat from the chaff on their calendars. Their time issues would not be solved by tearing themselves away from the television, for example. Most people I know are trying to decide between good and nourishing options for their time: family activities, meaningful work, exercise, spiritual practices, church or civic volunteer work, getting to know neighbors, play and leisure — the list goes on and on.
The Bible is replete with language of abundance — the idea that there is enough, not always for what we want, but for what we need. Yet I have come to reject the concept of time abundance. As Psalm 90 says, “The days ... are soon gone, and we fly away” (v. 10). There is never enough time, even for what is truly needful. Yet in the midst of my best attempts to use well the time I have, God’s grace endures.
“If only there were more hours in the day,” we often sigh. It is a sort of prayer. God answers the prayer not with more time, but with God’s own self. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,” the psalmist writes, “so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (v. 14).
In the midst of our anxieties about time, God is our steadfast “dwelling place.” While we strive to be mindful with the time that we have, we know it is God, and only God, who can “prosper the work of our hands” (v. 17).
MaryAnn McKibben Dana is associate pastor of Burke (Va.) Presbyterian Church. |
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