HOLY IS THIS TIME

The word "time" and the reality of time are part and parcel of our lives. We don't think about time very much. When we do think about it, we often refer to it in very practical and parochial ways. "I just don't know where the time goes." 'I'm running out of time." I got to pay that bill or I'll be penalized for not being on time." We talk of "comp time" and "making up time" at work. In all these instances, time plays a functional and financial role. Time is measured and connected with commodities and tasks, with watches and alarm clocks. Fittingly so! Without this sense of time we Americans would not get things done. (In fact, we wonder how other nations and cultures get anything done! Siestas and a more casual approach to time seem to indicate that almost every other culture is frivolous and certainly less serious about time. "Time is money," as we all know.)

We talk about leisure and meaningful activity in terms of time. Boredom is "having time on our hands." Retirement is "having too much time with nothing to do" for the person still adjusting to this new "golden time of life." We often measure significance and meaning in terms of time. A double off the Green Monster is a "timely hit." "We had a great time" - great meal, good music and dancing, fun people - at the wedding. "We had the time of our lives" on the Caribbean cruise. We speak about the human person in terms of time. "The biological time clock" is running out for those who do not have children by a certain age. We don't like meeting people who seem to be "time-bombs" and we don't want to be around them when the clicking stops. When we met and kissed and fell in love, "time stood still."

We break history up into time-periods - antiquity and late antiquity, the early and late medieval time, the Reformation, early modernity, modernity and post-modernity. People remember when Pearl Harbor was bombed, when D-Day occurred, when the murders of JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and RFK happened, when the Vietnam War ended, and when Richard Nixon resigned. Frequently people can tell you what they were doing, whom they were with, and how they felt when any of these events happened. Chances are people can tell you what they were doing and where they were when they heard that the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon had been attacked. 9/11 will be a benchmark phrase as familiar to us a 24/7.

Time seems to define our lives practically, professionally, politically, and personally. The time that we speak of is chronological. This kind of time is, at once, concrete and elusive, meaningful and memorable. We divide chronological time into past, present, and future. The present lasts but a moment and then slips irretrievable into the past. The past is locked in historical records and our memory. The present constantly refers us to a future that is not yet, but will be. We live in the ever changing and elusive present. Like the morning dew that glistens on summer lawns, the present evanesces and flies away. Yet, the present is where God's grace is working. It is the moment where we can abide and dwell in God's spirit.