Time

“God has set eternity in the hearts of men (and women)” (Eccl 3:11).

The concept of time is very important to us human beings. Our whole life is inseparably linked with the consistent progress of time. So obviously we put a high value on time, be that a year, a month or a day.


For example,

To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a year of uni and has to repeat it.

To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet each other.

To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask a person who just avoided an accident.

To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, ask the person who got a silver medal in the Olympics.

Time is valuable to us.

Remember when you were little and you just started learning how old you were? I remember when I was little, about 4 or 5, how it seemed like an eternity for me to get a year older. It seemed like every year in those days was equivalent to 20 ‘normal’ years. I must’ve driven my parents mad asking them every second day, “am I 6 yet?” Then when you reach senior school and after finishing school you beginning to realise how quickly a year actually passes by. The funny thing is that nothing has changed. A year is still 365 days. A day is still 24 hours. But the way we view ‘time’ changes. The things which we fill up our time with changes. It’s what we put into our life that determines how we view time.

Ecclesiastes is one of the oldest books in the Bible, written by the famous King Solomon. He was said to be the wisest man on the earth at that time – about 900 BC. In this chapter we read that there is a time for everything. A time for planting and a time to uproot, a time for building and a time for tearing down, a time to be quiet and a time to speak. Even 2900 years ago, people were struggling with the same thing we struggle with, and that is ‘when to do what’. How much time do you give to this, and how much time do you give to that? The message that we get from the Bible today is that there is a time for ‘everything’. The good, the bad, and even the downright ugly. There are times for birth and there are times for death. There are times of planting and times of uprooting. We find an amazing concept of “balance” that comes from this passage. It says there will be good times and there will be bad times, and each one will find its place in our lives. There is a certain amount of ‘balance’ that exists in life. You have probably heard of the ‘cycle of life’. You see that this is true especially on the world scale. There are times of war and times of peace, there are times of economic highs and economic lows. And a lot of that stuff is out of our control.

BUT what is within our control is how we live our lives within this cycle. What we take away from this is that we probably shouldn’t hold onto too tightly to things that will come and go. Things like money and wealth, possessions and even daily comforts, are all temporal (ie. Things that are bound to time). Things like money comes and goes, the effects of alcohol and drugs come and go, status and popularity comes and goes, ‘World of Warcraft’ comes and goes. The people who get into strife with alcohol or drugs, money or popularity, are the ones who think these things should last forever. But they don’t. They forget that there are other certain things which aren’t time-bound, things that are above the natural order, things that are more important. Jesus said,

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust can not reach, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6:19-21).

Things like the love between a father and a son, things like love between a husband and a wife, like the character of a virtuous young lady, or the character of a respectful young gentleman, things like hope and faith are all things that stand the test of time. They are all ‘supernatural’. When Jesus said to ‘store up treasures in heaven’, he spoke about striving for the ‘time-less’ not the ‘time-bound’ aspects of our life. He spoke about striving for a relationship with God and striving for relationships with others. He spoke of a love for life, not a love of the things in life.

I’ve begun to realise that the older you get, the busier you apparently get, and the busier you get the quicker time flies by. Now, our life that is so dependent on the constant progress of time, will hold all sorts of things in store for us – the good, the bad and the ugly. I guess the question is whether we choose to pursue the time-bound aspects of our life – the stuff that will come and go, or whether we pursue those things that operate above the nature of time. And like Jesus said, ‘wherever your treasure is (those things that you place a certain amount of importance on), there your heart will be also (that’s what you’ll be striving after).’ I hope that we can strive for the things in life that are worthwhile and let things slide that come and go.