The famous passage from Ecclesiastes that we have just heard read (Ecclesiastes 3. 1 - 15) is often understood as meaning that God orders our time and allots particular events to particular times and seasons. However, it can also be understood in terms of one of those phrases like ‘stuff happens’, ‘life happens’ which mean simply that what happens happens. The reality it says is that all our lives will contain enough time for births and deaths, tears and laughter, mourning and dancing, conflict and peace to occur. There is time enough in each of our lifetimes for all these things and it is inevitable that we will experience them.
While it is inevitable that the highs and lows of life will occur over the course of our lives, we don’t know when these things will occur or how long our lives themselves will be, and so inevitability is combined with uncertainty. We often respond to this by trying to impose order either by detailed planning on our own part or by asking that God will order our days. When we do so, we can end up preoccupied with the future, instead of experiencing the present.
As we don’t know how much time we have, it is imperative that we must use the time we currently have wisely. We do so by savouring and appreciating the time we have whether that is: time at home - growing together as a family; time at work – completing tasks and supporting colleagues; time at church - in worship, fellowship and prayer; or time alone with God - praying and reading the Bible.
Van Morrison sings that ‘These are the days, the time is now … There's only here, there's only now.’ Similarly, Simon Small has written, ‘There is always only now. It is the only place that God can be found.’ Each moment we are alive is unique and unrepeatable. As singer-songwriter, Victoria Williams, has put it, ‘This moment will never come again / I know it because it has never been before.’ We live in the present and can only encounter God in this moment, in the here and now, today.
We can only live in the here and now. In Deuteronomy 30. 11 - 20 we read of Moses saying to the Israelites, “today … I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses” and exhorting them to “choose life.” Similarly, in Hebrews 3. 7 - 19, the writer of that letter says, ‘Today, if you hear his [God’s] voice, do not harden your hearts …’ The emphasis of these passages is that now is the moment to encounter God, now is the moment to live.
Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 tells us that there is time, if we use the time that is available to us. All too often we do not take the time we have to be with those that are important to us. All too often we distract ourselves with unimportant tasks and fail to do the things that are truly of importance to us. Ecclesiastes 3.1-11 encourages us to use the time that we have. So, as we often pray during funerals, grant us, Lord, the wisdom and the grace to use aright the time that is left to us on earth. Let us use that time to know others more completely, appreciate them more fully, love them more deeply, and, in that knowing, know ourselves more intimately. For to know and appreciate and love and enjoy each other in that way is heaven.
How much time have we got? We don’t know, so we must use it all wisely. The past is behind us, the future is yet to come, so now is the only moment in which we can live and move and have our being. This means that now is always the moment in which to encounter God, now is always the moment in which to truly come alive and truly live, now is always the moment in which we can give of ourselves in thanks for all that God has given to us. There's only here, there's only now. This moment is unique and unrepeatable. It will never come again because it has never been before. So, these are the days for encounter, for living and loving and for giving. The time is now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Van Morrison - These Are The Days.
No comments:
Post a Comment