time, day 4

Come to Stillness:
Take a few minutes to allow your mind and heart to be still before God.

Opening Prayer:
Lord,

      Help me walk slowly and deeply with you through the hours and minutes of this day—that I might find all of you that is to be found within it. Allow me not to miss you because of hurry or busyness, but let me sense the fullness of your presence in each moment. Slow down both my feet and my heart that I might be more present to you as I go about my normal activities. In the Name of Jesus I pray. Amen. (JLB)

Psalm for the Week: Psalm 90

Scripture for the Day: Psalm 103:13-19

Reading for Reflection:

     Hope that grows out of trust puts us in a different relationship to the hours and days of our lives.  We are constantly tempted to look at time as chronology, as chronos, as a series of disconnected incidents and accidents.  This one way we think we can manage time or subdue tasks.  Or a way that we feel the victims of our schedules.  For this approach also means that time becomes burdensome.  We divide our time into minutes and hours and weeks and let its compartments dominate us.

     As still not completely converted people we immerse ourselves in clock time.  Time becomes a means to an end, not moments in which to enjoy God or pay attention to others.  And we end up believing that the real thing is always still to come.  Time for celebrating or praying or dreaming gets squeezed out.  No wonder we get fatigued and deflated!  No wonder we sometimes feel helpless or impoverished in our experience of time.

     But the gospel speaks of “full” time.  What we are seeking is already here.  The contemplative Thomas Merton once wrote, “The Bible is concerned with time’s fullness, the time for an event to happen, the time for an emotion to be felt, the time for a harvest or for the celebration of a harvest” (The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton).  We begin to see history not as a collection of events interrupting what we “must” get done.  We see time in light of faith in the God of history.  We see how the events of this year are not just a series of incidents and accidents, happy or unhappy, but the molding hands of God, who wants us to grow and mature.

     Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seems ripe for their intended purpose.  Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, “Something good is happening amid all this.”  We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days.  Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God’s work with us.  Whatever happens—good things or bad, pleasant or problematic—we look and ask, “What might God be doing here?” We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart.  Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. (Turn My Mourning Into Dancing by Henri J. M. Nouwen)

Reflection and Listening: silent and written

Prayer: for the church, for others, for myself

Song for the Week: Come, Now is the Time to Worship

Come, now is the time to worship

Come, now is the time to give your heart

Come, just as you are to worship

Come, just as you are before your God

Come

One day every tongue will confess you are God

One day every knee will bow

Still the greatest treasure remains for those

Who gladly choose you now

Closing Prayer:

O Christ, when I look at you I see that you were never in a hurry, never ran, but always had time for the pressing necessities of the day. Give me that disciplined, poised life with time always for the thing that matters. For then I would be a disciplined person. Amen. (The Way by E. Stanley Jones)