The Beauty of Time

Time is such an amazing commodity when invested well!

If it's one thing on which Reformed Christians focus well, it's sin. Andrew Quigley preached an amazing sermon series at a Horn Creek conference on the stunningly underrepresented topic of sin, and it go me thinking. Humans have wandered the desert landscape of a sin-saturated earth for thousands of years, blazing away a small fraction of their lives in either cleaning up from, or digging deeper into, the nature of Adam & Eve's attempt at a shortcut. Jesus didn't take it from Satan in the desert, but they wanted wisdom and power faster than God promised. And boy, did they pass on their shortcutting habits!

There's a passage in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength that indicates Merlin's bi-polar society - he can go from blubbering like a child to sitting calmly without any embarrassment whatsoever. Lewis knew that a split society is marginally effective. What he would have deplored is our current desperation to be continually fractured, in a frantic effort to 'make much of time'.

Making yourself be still can be a hard thing - yoga classes call it being 'centred'. But without stillness, the gift of time can be turned into a Mansfield Park array of "a quick succession of busy nothings". And that means you spend your life chasing your tail, with others to clear away the damage as you lumber through fences and signposts and china shops, like a blind bull. As Ezra and Nehemiah found out, clearing away the rubbish of a city's broken wall takes an enormous amount of focused energy - and time. Let alone building a new wall.

Austen and Lewis knew that a life spent in swift toil in service of the Enemy was nothing more than time lost. They outline the heartbreaking lack of preparation of children by parents, focus spent on fripperies, people eating and drinking and making merry til death. And then the contrast, of those who have learned the wisdom of avoidance of 'bad company', who value true friendship in strange packages (such as Miss Bates!), and wise financial investments in the eternal. This thrift pays dividends, such as a tree made into a wardrobe that opens into a magic world.

We all know that to invest in certain things, such as exercise and Eating Right, pays dividends. You can force yourself out the door to puff around the block in the comforting reflection that it's good for your heart and burns calories. Burning brain calories is a bit harder, and less visible - and much more satisfying. Investment in the invisible often pays well.

Good time spent means preparation - I can now pack for a week-long trip in an hour. Everything's been put away in its place, or in a bag. I can type out a review of a book in half a day instead of five days (like in my freshman year of college) because I've done it 200 times before. I can have a conversation about the gospel and be convincing, because I've fallen on my face trying to present it 100 times before. I can plot the course of a film because I've seen 1,000 of them. (That's not really something to be proud of!) I can walk into a house and figure out how to approach the difficult dog inside of 10 minutes because I've petsit at 30 different places. But each time, I have to allow time to figure out what will be puzzling, and make mistakes.

Thank God, in heaven we will have all the time in the world, and none of it will be wasted on the world. :)

Scales Hatred

"I hate the scales. They mock me."

So said a good friend of mine today, when we were discussing the issues of non-svelteness. We used to be skinny, and the moan of the world has now become our tune: If only.

If only we didn't have to spend time exercising that feels pointless anyway, continually read Scripture just so we can forget the best verses in conversation (those ones that would force others to change their view), or do the daily disciplines of deodorant and dish-washing, we'd have a lot more free time. Of course, every time that I DO get all virtuous and go exercising, and then hop on the scale to See My Progress, I'm horribly disappointed. The scale's monologue goes something like this:

'Haha! See if you can move me! It's impossible! Now go eat an ice cream bar out of resigned indifference!'

Oddly enough, the same voice pops up when I want to read Scripture or engage in prayer. Only, instead of ice cream bars, the carrot that is dangled (what an incentive, if you're a donkey) is more like the Necessity of Projects. When I have my teeth brushed and my face washed and I'm all tucked into a holy posture for prayer - that's when it 'suddenly' occurs to me that laundry has not been done, thank-you cards not written, and by gum I need to make sure that the bank has really taken care of the bills on BillPay. None of these things can possibly wait until after I speak with the Lord of the Universe, who has plenty of time for creating new species and sorting out issues of world hunger, but none at all for my piddly details of existence. Sure, He loves me and all, but as a good Reformed sort I'm firmly convinced in my heart of hearts that there are limits to His love. "After all", I reason, "it doesn't do to tick Him off. Perhaps when I go to pray, He's feeling like incinerating me for aiming swear words at the minister in my head on the Sabbath. While I do these chores, I shall ponder the paths of my feet, and restrain the Lord from turning me into a pile of salt. Obviously if I go talk to Him, I've got to be perfectly prepared."

This idea of Perfect Preparation works really well until you have a real issue, such as confronted David when on the run from Saul, or Solomon's insights into the folly of his own building efforts (Psalm 127), or the captives in Babylon. Then all the piddly details of existence can go hang while you go talk to your Father, pouring out your heart to Him - and when that's over, somehow everything gets allocated to its proper place. Sure, you're still a slave, but you can at least sing a song of Zion under your breath and keep hoping for the day of the Lord when your enemies get paid back in full. (Those Psalms are especially satisfying after listening to political news reports.)

My minister said something of profound import this Sabbath about scales. Two of our church visitors are professional musicians, and they still spend significant amounts of time on scales - boring, repetitive, finger-limbering scales. He equated it to our spiritual disciplines: praying, reading the Word, listening to the Pastor speak. (We all had a laugh at this last barb to the children, who get a little restless in lifting their longing eyes to the clock, from whence comes salvation from long sermons.)

Repeated actions seem like a completely inefficient time-swamp. You can throw in hours of laundry and car repair and mending of clothes, the Time Swamp will swallow them all and greedily open its maw for more. (The horse-leech hath four daughters, crying 'Give! Give!) God requires us to wend our way through the swamp, just like Frodo and Sam on their way to Mordor, occasionally staring at dead faces of those who got sucked into the swamp along the way. He requires us to throw tithe into the collection plate to pay for endless amounts of church supplies and salaries; He requires us to spend hours praying and reading His word, and for what? So that the wicked can keep merrily squashing us and then asking us "well, where is He?" And some of us sure feel like asking Him the same question, since He doesn't seem in a hurry to answer our neediest prayers.

But C.S. Lewis is right - pain is the gift that nobody wants - the pain of 'wasted time', the pain of year after year of weary playing of spiritual scales, the 'what's the use' feeling that we fight. After years of blows on our rock-hard forms like an artist's hammer-blows on marble, the things that hurt us so much (little or great) are those which turn our image to something resembling Christ. And that consummation is devoutly to be wished.