One year ends, another begins. Time marches on.
How can we come to the annual calendar replacement without thinking about time? Perhaps about what we do with it?
Generally, we tend to think about time in a couple of different ways.
Naturally, time involves the sequential passing of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks—units of “time” that we tend to perceive as commodities. When we say things like, “I don’t have time!” we usually mean something like, “I need more hours in the day!” Such exasperation comes as we look at our to-do list or honey-do list and see more projects calling for attention than hours available to get it all done.
It’s the rapid passing of time—of moments and hours—that drives us frantically through the day. “I still have to get to the store, pick up the kids from school, stop at the library, get dinner going, and it’s already 2:30! Where has the time gone!?!” we wonder.
It’s that same passing of time that makes the clock something we race against. More than a mere competitor, the clock is our enemy! Those ticking seconds are doing battle with my to-do list and seem to be winning!
Ironically, this is how Job felt a few thousand years ago. Even though the poor soul suffered terribly with miserable afflictions, he lamented,
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.
– Job 7:6
I say “ironically” because we might tend to feel just the opposite in such circumstances—that time is crawling!
Sometimes it works that way, doesn’t it?
We just came through the Christmas holidays, and some of us have children running around the house who thought the clock moved way too slowly! As if Christmas morning would never come! Parents can feel that way a little bit, as well. Remember that Christmas song It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and the line “…and mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again!”?
Or how about the week before you leave for vacation—at work, at least? The hours drag by until you walk out the door and head for the mountains, lake, beach, or wherever. Funny, though, how the clock speeds up during vacation, isn’t it?
Ever sat in a hospital waiting room waiting for a loved one to get out of surgery? The sands of time trickle through the glass.
That’s one way we think about time: “clock time.” And when it comes to clock time, whether the hands are whirring by or plodding along at a snail’s pace, one thing’s for sure. When that minute flows on by, it’s gone forever!
December is past. 2022 is past. And it seems like we were just saying the same thing about 2021…and 2020….
And saying that reminds me of the repeated lyrics of a song from four decades ago:
But time
Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea
To the sea
‘Til it’s gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore– “Time” by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons
Whether the minutes crawl by or the hours whir away, when they pass, they’re gone…there’s no retrieving a single second!
Besides “clock time,” another way of thinking about time is “seasonal time.”
With seasonal time, we’re not referring to a day or individual units of time. More like a “parenthesis” of time that may or may not have a hard starting and stopping point.
We just past the Christmas season. Well, most of us have. Some continue it until January 6—and that’s fine. When does the Christmas season begin, anyway? In my way of thinking, after Thanksgiving–but I’m an old-fashioned curmudgeon about it. Walmart’s been in the thick of it since Halloween!
Every year passes through its four seasons. Technically, they are marked by the relationship of earth to sun and have precise starting and end points. But practically speaking, the season’s length is more nebulous—tied more to the weather than the calendar. Memorial Day, so says the popular sentiment, is the start of summer. Labor Day is the start of autumn—3 weeks or so before the sun says so!
At my age, my bride and I have occasionally discussed the possibility of living elsewhere when (or if) we retire. Some far-south state appeals to my aging bones that ache and creak at the biting Illinois cold, but the other half isn’t so keen on the idea. “I like the seasons,” she says. As if autumn and winter don’t come to south Florida. Well, we all know what she means, right?
We think about various stages of life as “seasons” through which we pass. As in another old song where the crooner reflects on certain ages: “When I was 17…when I was 21…when I was 35…it was a very good year.” But then comes an imprecise stage of life, “the autumn of the year,” where the days are short. And that season subtly and just as imprecisely gives way to the last—winter.
“Seasonal time” can also span decades—centuries, even.
Think of the “Pax Romana”—that roughly 200-year golden age of relative peace and tranquility throughout the Mediterranean world during the ancient Roman Empire.
Or the “Dark Ages.” Or the Enlightenment. Or the Industrial Revolution. Or the age we call “Modernism.”
Seasons all…and, as with all seasons, all have come and gone.
“Flowing like a river…to the sea…‘til it’s gone forever.”
Clock time and seasonal time. We live in both. And both senses of time show up in the Bible with some interesting challenges.
Regarding clock time (chronos is the Greek term), there’s an interesting comment connected to Christmas in Galatians 4:4:
“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His son, born of a woman…”
In other words, God had a clock running—a timetable, if you will—and at the precise, predetermined chronological moment, Jesus was born!
Of great encouragement to followers of Jesus, Paul writes that God…
“…saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began…”
– 2 Timothy 1:9
And he wrote to Titus, stating that God promised the hope of eternal life “before time began.” (Titus 1:2)
In other words, before the clock ever started ticking!
But then in practical application, Peter exhorts:
“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile…”
– 1 Peter 1:17
In other words, “your exile” is the lifetime of the Christian in this world, and the day-by-day, hour-by-hour living needs to be carried out in the “fear” of God—or with the respect and reverence due Him, living in the light of His ongoing presence.
He puts this another way in 1 Peter 4:2:
We are to live “the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.”
Moment-by-moment.
The Bible also speaks of “season time” in many places.
For example, when Jesus was teaching about some future events, He warned,
“Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time [or season] will come.”
– Mark 13:33
He wasn’t focused so much on an hour on the clock but on the beginning of a season.
In thinking about the contrast between this-life difficulties and the splendor of the eternal state with Christ, Paul remarked,
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time [or season] are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
– Romans 8:18
He also offers a warning to those who continue to reject Christ as Savior:
“For he says, ‘In a favorable time [or season] I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time [or season]; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
– 2 Corinthians 6:2
The important point to catch here is that there’s no precise end point to this season—at least from our perspective. One can’t know when that “favorable time” will end! The exhortation is to trust Christ as Lord and Savior while the opportunity is available.
Finally, in two of his letters, Paul challenges us to “redeem the time [or season]” from something harmful or destructive.
In Ephesians 5:16 we need to “redeem the time” because the days are evil. So much could be said about this. Suffice it to say, if we’re not proactive in how we live, we’ll waste our lives.
In Colossians 4:5 we need to “redeem the time” by living wisely to influence positively those around us.
In most of these uses of time—clock or seasonal—the underlying sense is that the hours and the seasons are flowing like a river, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.
Live accordingly!
