God’s Gift of Time

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

If I only had a little more time! These words have echoed across centuries – just a few more minutes would help. Richard Swenson in his book Margin wrote, “Forty years ago, futurists peering into their crystal balls were still predicting that one of the biggest problems for coming generations would be what to do with their abundant spare time. I remember hearing this prediction often. In 1967, for example, testimony before a Senate subcommittee claimed that by 1985 people could be working just twenty-two hours a week or twenty-seven weeks a year. Exactly when they stopped talking this way I am not sure, but they did stop. No one sits around today trying to figure out how to spend their free time. On the contrary, the topic of conversation is usually how to get some. Virtually everyone I know is time desperate.”

Thankfully the world timekeepers have heard your plight and are working on a plan. Unfortunately, they are going to take time from you. Clocks may have to skip a second—called a “negative leap second”—around the year 2029. This will be the first time in history timekeepers have had to consider subtracting time from the clock. Daylight saving time doesn’t count since they take an hour but give it back to you in the fall. In an article in the journal, Nature said it is due to the planet rotating just a tad faster than it used to.

Duncan Agnew wrote, “This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal. It’s not a huge change in the Earth’s rotation that’s going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It’s yet another indication that we’re in a very unusual time.” (from an article by Seth Borenstein)

Seconds didn’t make a difference in life until atomic clocks were adopted as the official time standard in 1959.  Judah Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology wrote, “The fights are so serious because the stakes are so small.”

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) does a great job keeping America on time. Two people can look at their Apple watches and be synchronized. We take uniform time for granted now, unlike the 1800s. At high noon on October 18, 1883, William Allen united a nation, not politically but by setting their watches.  Until then every train station set its clocks by the sun so it could be noon in New York, 11:58 in Trenton, and 11:56 in Camden. It took eight years for Allen to convince the nation to adopt the time zones that we have today.

There is no question that trains and planes need to run on synchronized schedules, that stores should open on time, and that you know when to get to your meeting as scheduled. However, the writer of Ecclesiastes captured a more important time zone outside the NIST-designated time zones, God’s time zone. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 gives a great list of God’s time zones, “a time to.” Mabel Boggs Sweet, mother of writer Leonard Sweet put it wisely, “God’s clock keeps perfect time.”

Time may have been easier when people depended upon the sundial and they went to bed when it got dark. However as far back as 200 BC people complained about not having enough time. Roman playwright Plautus turned anger into poetry:

“The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours!

Confound him, too,  who in this place set up a sun-dial

To cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small portions.”

Even though He operates on eternal time, God created earth and life to be in time segments. “A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” (Psalm 90:4) I think God is pretty smart to give us training wheels for time as we prepare for what eternity time looks like.  Segments of time are understandable for our finite minds and beautifully lay the foundation for helping us appreciate the concept of eternity.

Ancient civilizations may have understood the value of time better than our modern world. They lived their life in segments of days, seasons, years, and finally death. Our modern civilization may have time down to the microsecond and even track those seconds perfectly but somehow in our micro timekeeping, are we in danger of losing the very value of time and far worse, the hope of eternity?

In his book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer writes, “When the sun set our rhythms of work and rest, it did so under the control of God; but the clock is under the control of the employer, a far more demanding master…I used to read biographies of great men and women from history who got up to pray at four o’clock in the morning—Saint Teresa of Avila, John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon. I would think, Wow, they are way more serious about Jesus than I am. True, but then I realized that they went to bed at seven o’clock! After nine hours of sleep, what else was there to do?”

Moses understood the blessing of time:

“Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures…Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:10a,12)

Peter understood the blessing of time:

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:8-9)

God understood the blessing of time:

[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.  Ecc 3:11

Time! What a great gift from God. Time, may we use it wisely to savor the beauty of creation, listen well to the sounds of life, and pause just a little to reflect upon all the blessings of God.

God is great!