Time Capsule
God’s view
Psalm 90
4 For a thousand years
in Thy sight are like yesterday when it passes by.
9 We have finished our years like a sigh....Their pride is but labor and
sorrow.
15 Make us glad according to the days Thou hast afflicted us. Let Thy
work appear to Thy servants. 17 Yes, confirm the work of our hands.
If God doesn’t
confirm it, it has no value, no purpose. It’s like shifting sand.
Hands, Hebrew – power, means, direction. Work plus yield: it’s
the whole picture (an open hand) as opposed to a closed hand which is
in Hebrew “the hollow hand or palm, the paw of an animal.” The
work of our hands is our directed work (from God), not what we do. It
includes who we are in relation to what we do. It is the valued work as
it relates to us, not the hourly work, or even the things that are made
and done but the practice of directed work with the process as much a
part as the accomplishments.
Psalm
90:12
So teach us to number our days.
The Hebrew means to weigh out, to allot or constitute officially, enumerate
or enroll, appoint, count, prepare, set, tell. Teach me to tell the story
of my days and give an accurate account in Your light, not mine.
I
Timothy 6:12
Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which
you were called.
Eternal: vision time, timeless time, an appreciation of time also as a
whole thing.
Greek, take hold of the always, ever time.
Contrast with I Timothy 5:13
At the same time they
learn to be idle, as they go around from house to house.
They are barren, useless, without acts, deeds. They are not still, like
endless chatter, no form or substance, no deed.
Man’s
view
John Stuart Mill:
the truth of poetry is to paint the human soul truly; the truth of the
future is to give a true picture of life.
I like that. Tomorrow
(the future) will show me the picture of my life today. I can’t see
the picture until I’m past it, and it is behind me. Then it’s
too late really. The experience is captured only as a picture, not the
burning, passionate reality that it was.
T.S. Eliot’s
“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
In a minute there
is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse
For I have known them all already, known them all
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Work and days are meaningless. Life has no meaning above and beyond. This is the perspective of man without God. Going through the motions, yet without understanding. Sad.
St. Augustine
What is time? We can explain through the past and the future. Can we say that time is, when it is tending not to be? A long time, a short time, we say. But how can we measure that which is not. We can only say it is long in the present. When it is past, it is gone. But the present has no space. It is an instant of time which can be conceived, but even that is over before it is notice. Yet we perceive intervals of time and compare them. But we measure time as it is passing by perceiving it. When time is passing, it may be perceived and measured, but when it is past, it cannot.
Memory serves the
purpose of filling in the blanks. But memory is inaccurate, skewing the
moments, making only those which have made an impact stick out. The rest
are lost. The smallest bit is retained of past time. Sensory impressions.
I measure time in my mind and my mind is not the most accurate instrument,
is it?
In Macbeth, Macduff said, the time is free. He said that time has been unnaturally imprisoned, that time is a healer by itself, that sleep is a natural companion of time, that evil interferes with nature and its visible component, time. Macduff didn’t have it exactly right. It’s not nature, but God who gave me time. Time was created by God as a blessing. Why do I make it a curse, always wishing for a better past, a more exciting present, and a future without pain and suffering? This time is the stuff of mortality, and mortality is the gift that I have to help me live a richer life.
Michael Sobel said,
“When the perception of time changes, all other values are affected.”
I was thinking about when I discovered I had melanoma, and the possibility
that it had spread, my values changed. Life became precious. Each moment
felt glorious because I realized that my time could be short. I experienced
sensations on a heightened plain. I could taste more and sense more on
the physical level because I knew the shortness of this life first-hand.
In seventeenth century England, time was perceived as tied to its use or function and not as an independent system. Clocks appeared on church towers, but served in an inexact fashion. Life periods were marked by an individual’s role, not his age. Birthdays were connected with outside significant events. However, the upper class was concerned with the use of time. They numbered their days. Puritans also emphasized a
strict accounting of time. As a Christian I should be aware of my time as limited, at the same time, I need to let go of an overly strict accounting of the minutes. I love to think of Jesus and the woman at the well. He had no sense of the time, that it was lunch time or that maybe He should be talking to a crowd somewhere. He slowed down and talked to one woman as long as it took to show her who He was.
This from the poet
R.M. Rilke:
Call me to that one
of your hours
which is incessantly resisting
you: close as a dog's begging
face, but turned away as ever,
when you think it's finally caught.
What's taken like this is most yours.
We're free. Where we'd thought
we were welcomed -- we were sent from there.
Afraid, we claw only for a hold,
we, sometimes too young for what's old
and too old for what never was.
We're just only where we praise nonetheless.
For, oh, we're the bough and the axe
and the sweetness of ripening risk.
How true. We’re
only just where we praise. We only think we are free. We’re held
by what we think, what we value. We’re searching (clawing), but without
knowing what we’re searching for. It’s like the song about the
streets with no name all over again. We’re really searching for heaven,
for rest, for putting ourselves together in a wholeness. Without God,
we can’t get there. The sweetness of ripening risk becomes empty
and meaningless without Him.
From
Me
Here’s a note
from a discouraging year, 1995.
November 26 The year
is almost over. Can you believe it? I used to think this was a horrible
year, this year of transition, totally and completely. Now I think this
was the great year. It was the year of discouragement, of testing things
that didn’t work, and finding out that what matters is the growth
of a soul which happens especially during transition, deeply and broadly.
Thanks Lord for these choices and this life.
I agree even now (2007).
Success is not measured by outer accomplishments as much as by inner.
The heart is what it’s all about. I forget that the passage of time
can have a timeless quality, when the route is measured from the inside
rather than the outer.
From February 29,
1996 Journal
I think I do not have
regrets. I am grateful for the life of the wanderer. It has made me conscious
and alive. Made me think and examine my direction always. I am not complacent.
I do search for context, but it is context within my wandering.
From March 2, 1996
Journal
Thinking about responsibility
– it is entirely my fault for everything. My life is my fault. I
take the blame for today. It is my responsibility for today to try, to
work, and to never give up. To hope. To dream. And if I fail, then it
is still my fault. Not fate, not chance; but a lack of vision, a lack
of understanding on my part. But God gives me the understanding, and sometimes
it is His choice to withhold understanding.
I
Corinthians 13, Love chapter
Love defines who I
am on the inside (or lack of love defines me). Love makes my character
what it is, holds me together, and sustains me. Makes all my other qualities
work.
Jesus emptied himself.
How much love was that? I had a dream where I was cut up. My wrists, my
fingers. Searing pain. And I watched a circle of people die before me.
I finally lost consciousness. Sort of woke up and imagined the torture
Jesus must have endured on the cross. Awful, awful pain. In my dream I
felt pain, but nothing like He felt. He did this so I could live forever
with Him. Talk about timeless love....
Song
of Solomon 2:12
“The time has
arrived for pruning the vines.”
Assessment. Prioritizing.
Cutting back on old growth. Thinning out. This is a bidding to come along,
to follow and do together. It is thoughtful working together with the
Lord to make it beautiful again, make room for a well-cultivated and planned
garden. In chapter three, the bride did not prune. She did not catch the
foxes that were spoiling the vine. Then she wondered why he was not there
when she looked for him. Night after night she sought him but did not
find him. She sought in the city but did not find him until after a long
search. She held on to him and would not let him go until he came home
with her. That’s a life lesson. I need to be careful to listen promptly.
Be careful to follow through. When in trouble, it may be too late if I
haven’t kept up the ties, kept the faith. What a beautiful tribute
it is to God that that the bride is restored at last. I love this book.
The senses are drowned in beauty in this book. “Hurry, my beloved,
and be like the gazelle.” It’s a book about the timeless quality
of the bride and the groom, the love affair that depends on close relationship
to make it sweet and strong, full of fragrance.
Learning to deal with time is a process of learning to deal with my greatest weakness, the not-knowing, not-understanding element of what the future holds. It is learning to look at the mustard seed of faith and watch it grow through time. Time can enslave me with the rituals of allotting the minutes to routines which really won’t matter in the long run, or it can free me to involve myself in the eternal. The choice is mine.
—Joy Becker
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