Submitted by Andy McIlvain.
Time is sacred. Theologian Carl F.H. Henry characterized time as “the divinely created sphere of God’s preserving and redemptive work, and the arena of man’s decision on his way to an eternal destiny.”
We as humans have consciousness of past, present, and future. Our awareness of what constitutes sacred time is one of the significant differences between a Christian and a secularized person today. Alan Burdick says in his book Why Time Flies: “As we converse with and consider one another, we step in and out of the others own experience, including the other’s perceptions (or what we consider to be other people’s perceptions based on our own experience) of duration. Not only does duration bend, we are continuously sharing these small inflexions among us like currency or social glue.”
Time is sacred to us because it is limited and provided by God as a grace gift. As James 4:13-15 indicates, due to the fallen dynamic of our world, and life in general, we have no guarantees of being alive tomorrow. Rabbi Abraham Heschel states that the first consecrated measure of time in the Old Testament was the Sabbath day. Anthony Esolen, a scholar of Renaissance literature, describes time as “the moving image of eternity,” and adds, “All times are impregnated with God’s being and his eternal purposes.”
Our time is short. Think of all the years that we have spent maturing before we come to any use of reason and then – through the Holy Spirit – apply it to our lives. Consider our imperfect communication and relationships made sinful and evil by corrupt education, false principles, bad company, bad examples, and lack of experience and wisdom. We must learn and strive to be selfless and not self-centered, to put aside comfort and folly, to serve God and be led by the Spirit.
The Lord’s return will signal the end of time (earth’s history) and the coming last day. In that instant the created universe will “perish”, and all its elements will be “dissolved” and “pass away,” time included. All the suffering of our sinful world will be eliminated. Physical death will end, and false doctrines will be vanquished.
The time we have today, in this “now” before us, is “sacred time”. It was gifted to us by God the Father and paid for by Christ Jesus on the cross. We must use it wisely and not waste it.
I am 63 now and the river of life is on the move. Even now, on occasion, I sense eternity. Life and death show the value of Christ in our lives when in weakness, adversity, and pain we value him above all else.
Psalm 90:2 declares, “From everlasting to everlasting You are God”.