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THE NORTHERN KENTUCKY SEARCHER VOLUME 2, NUMBER 52, JANUARY 26, 2003 TIME
I don’t know if you noticed or not, but this issue of the bulletin
brings the second year of its publication to a close.
I began it just a few weeks after Vicky and I arrived to start
worshipping and working with this congregation.
It is hard to believe that it has been two years already.
In some ways it seems like no time at all and in other ways (still good)
it seems like we have been here for a long time.
Time – it doesn’t seem to fly by until you are looking back at it.
This past week Scott Taylor, an evangelist from
The bible has a great deal to say about time.
I think of David’s statement in Psalm 37:25, “I have been young,
and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging
bread.” In the natural order
of things, that is the way it goes. We
are young and then we are old, and it sure doesn’t seem to take very long.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon often addressed the inexorable march
of time. In Eccl. 3:1 – 2, we
find, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under
the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to
pluck up that which is planted.” In
the 12th chapter of the book, he wrote about the need to use the time
of our youth and young adulthood wisely, because the time is coming (and we
can’t stop it) when we will just not be as physically able to do some of the
same things. Verses 1 – 7 is a
classic passage about the relentless march of time and its effects.
Solomon wrote, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,
while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I
have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the
stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when
the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves,
and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the
window be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound
of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all
the daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be afraid of
that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall
flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because
man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the
silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at
the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it.”
That passage takes on a whole new meaning when you understand that it is
talking about what time does to the human body.
When we think about it, even if we live to a ripe old age, in the great
expanse of time, it is but a dot on the line.
Job addressed the brevity of life in Job 14:1-2 “Man that is born of
a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.
He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a
shadow, and continueth not.” Certainly
we are all familiar with the passage in James 4:13-14, where he wrote, “Go
to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue
there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: whereas ye know not what shall be
on the morrow. For what is your
life? It is even a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”
So what do we do with our time? Well,
we certainly don’t want to sit around worrying about the fact that it really
does go by so quickly. Every second
spent worrying about that is a second that we never get back.
No, we have to embrace every minute that we have.
In Ephesians 5:15-16, Paul wrote, “See then that ye walk
circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days
are evil.”
That does not mean that we have to be working every minute of every day.
Solomon did tell us that there was a time for every purpose under heaven,
and he included in there time for rest and recreation.
It does mean that every second is to be wisely used, always remembering
that we are children of God and conducting ourselves every minute of every hour
of every day like children of God ought to.
Also, it doesn’t make much sense to “put off to tomorrow” something
we know ought to be done today, particularly in the spiritual realm, because we
don’t know that tomorrow will be, or that we will be part of it if it comes.
Won’t it be wonderful to someday step over into a world that is not
bound by time; no deadlines, no appointments, no clocks or watches? Someday we
will step into eternity and be with the Lord Jesus, opening the final chapter in
the book of our lives, and it will never end. Greg Litmer
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