Our Moment in Time
Psalm 90:12

"So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom"

What time is it? There is not one of us who has not asked that question. There is not one of us who at one time or another has not sat fidgeting and watching the time, hoping that it will pass more quickly. And on the other hand we have no doubt, in moments of extreme enjoyment wished that the time would go slower. And yet no matter what are desires about the time are at any given moment,  time still continues to flow like an ever rolling stream. Never for a single moment does it stop. All the advances that we have made on earth can never change that. All the desires that we have, can not altar that fact. All of our impatience and anxiety cannot stop the flow of time. Time is like an ever rolling stream. We also know that each of us will run out of time.

It is in such human divisions of time such as the division into years that remind us of this. Each New year brings to our memory the passage of time. Another year has past, another period of  time has elapsed, another period of time is to be lived. And this brings us face to face with God, because  time is one of God's great gifts to us. Whatever God's plan is for humankind, and indeed for our personal lives, it must be worked out in time. We, therefore, must attempt to live out our time on Earth according to God's wisdom.  So at the beginning of this year 2006 let us ask God as did the Psalmist:

"Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.''

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Gods wise use of time sometimes contradicts our natural tendencies for we desire fast results. "Immediately" is a very important word in our vocabulary. We are often led by that which offers us easy and fast success.  We read in advertisements "Learn to play a musical instrument in te n easy lessons" or "Get rich quickly in your spare time" or "Be a successful leader with only a few minutes a day". We want fast results. We don't want the long tedious learning process.  It is for this reason some young people leave school. They grow impatient with the tediousness of school, and desire to hurry the process. Why study? Why go through all that book learning?  I can  get a job, earn some money, and buy a car? What more can there be in life?

      Television sometimes can influence our thinking.  So many programs have only an hour to get through the whole plot.  So everything happens quickly.  Everything is sensational, critical and climatic. We look at our lives and ninety percent of it is mundane, routine, unexciting so we conclude that something is missing.  It is not as exciting as the programs we watch day in and day out. We want excitement.  We want things to happen fast.  We want short-cuts to success and short-cuts to living. We want to everything to be completed in an hour.

However, what we learn of Gods wisdom in the scriptures is that satisfaction in life comes through discipline, patience and hard work. Happiness comes from living each moment to the fullest. We have just been through the Christmas story. We have heard that God was seen in human form in the "fullness of time". There were many hundreds of long years of preparation, so that people were able to receive such a revelation. We also learn the same lesson from stories in the Hebrew scriptures such as  Exodus. Those People traveling from Egypt to Palestine took forty years.  It was  forty years of  hardship, sorrow and many bitter disappointments before they reached what they considered to be their destination. However they discovered along the way the journey was just as important as the destination. The destination can in itself be quite disappointing. In fact, the destination was the beginning of another journey.  They saw the wisdom in seeing their lives as a continuous journey.  God led them in the Exodus to see the importance of time. They learned to number their days and apply their hearts unto Gods Wisdom thoughout their whole journey of faith.

We all know the tragedy of our lives and the lives of others, of always seeking the easy way, the shortest way. We have seen people, no doubt, who have gone from one easy path to another, lives that tragically end with little accomplished, with many starts but few finishes, with many intentions, but nothing more. The tragedy seems to lie in the playful use of time.

      In the squares and gardens of many cities in our world we see streams of water shooting out of fountains of all kinds, from the mouths of marble figures, or in the outstretched hands of water nymphs.  It seems to them like water is nothing but something to play with.  But with people adrift in a lifeboat on the high sea, or in some way or another crossing the desert, they know the value of water. Water needs to be measured drop by drop. 

Too often we are like those artistic fountains and we play with time as if it was no that valuable.  However, when we think of our own lives, with unfulfilled dreams and purposes, and unfinished character, we have to realize that time is the most valuable thing we have.  Whatever needs to be done in our lives, we need to do it now no matter how hard it is to do, or how long it takes.

      A man wanted to take a course in order to do something he wanted all his life.  The course would take him ten years to complete. Someone asked him, "Why don't you do it.?" He replied, "I'll be fifty by the time I finish". His friend asked, "How old will you be in ten years if you don't do it?" He had to reply, "Well, fifty!"

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We must be "respecters of time", the same as we must be respecters of all that God has given us. There is a definite stewardship of time '.  We are stewards of time not servants of time, all the time that God has given us.  This is  time not only to achieve  things for ourselves alone, but to make ourselves ready to serve the greater good for all people in whatever situations that await us.

If we are to be a "respecters of time" we must' respect minutes as well as the hours, respect the days as well as the e years. For the one who is faithful in that which is least is also faithful in that which is much and the one who is not faithful in that which is least,  is not faithful in that which is much. This is true in regard to money   faithfulness in pennies as well as dollars. This is true in regard to all of our possessions and it is also true in regard to time,

There are so many things that one can do in a minute.  It could be an act of kindness, or word of appreciation ion For these we often say, "I will have a more convenient time " and in many cases we bid them depart from us. We lose the opportunity.

Many things are done in moments of time. :'Some have educated themselves in the moments that they would otherwise have wasted. People have read the Bible in moments of waiting....not quickly and surely, and consistently in moments that have been given to them.  One can smite temptation in a moment.  We can be called out of fatal slumber in a moment of time.

How important is a moment? 

      Once on the rocky coast of Scotland, a man was lowered by a rope from the top of a cliff to a ledge in order to gather the eggs of a wild sea fowl. In careless moment he let the rope slip away from him to his great peril, and seeing the rope swinging  toward him and realizing that  its second swing would be shorter than the first, he waited until it reached the end of the swing then leapt to seize it and was drawn up the cliff to safety. In a moment of time he had to choose and act.

That will often be so in the destiny of our lives. In the use of moments we rise or fall. Our ministry to others is made up of many moments?

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We have come again to the end of an old year, and the beginning of a new year.  We face new experiences and a new road that rises before us.

      Let us regard the time that has been given to us as a sacred trust. It was pointed out to me once that lost wealth may be replaced by industry, and often lost health by medical science, but a misspent period of time is gone forever. Time is indeed a sacred trust.

      Let us fill time , rather than kill time.

      Let us live one day at a time, letting yesterday go, and not living tomorrow until it arrives.

      Let us in the time we have left, not only make a living, but make a life.

      Let us learn to love the joy of simple things, the beauty of flowers, the songs of birds, the laughter of children.

      Let us triumph over the sordid, meanness and unlovely circumstances in life by seeing goodness in the midst of it all, the goodness of God in the midst of evil.

      Let us drink deep from the well of living water that is constantly springing up to enrich our lives.

Let us be taught to number of days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom

 

LET US PRAY

      Lord, ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.  Stay my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.  Give me amid the confusion of the day the calmness of the everlasting hills.  Break the tensions of my nerves with the soothing music of the singing streams that live in memory.  Help me to know the restoring power of sleep.  Teach me the art of talking minute vacations, slowing down to look at a flower, chat with a friend, pet a dog, or read a few lines from a good book.

      Remind me each day of the fable of the hare and the tortoise, that I may know that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing speed.  Let me look upward in the branches of a towering oak and know that it grew straight and strong because it grew slowly and well.

      Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots in into the soil of life's enduring values that I may grow toward the stars of my greater destiny.

      Amen

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