Hey slow down!!! I just read an alumni update from my university and see that it’s been ____teen years since I pulled an all-nighter to rectify the procrastination with which I constantly fought in my Greek Mythology class. And then, as if all in the same string of thoughts, complained to myself why the game I want to watch on TV doesn’t start for 5 more hours! (This dilemma is exasperated in Europe where I’m adding 6 hours to the announced ET start times.) What I’m realizing is that time moves much more quickly than we would like, but also, somehow, simultaneously too slowly.
In the Bible, this sense that time ebbs and flows exists as well. Moses recognized that passing time is a relative matter when he psalmed, “For you, a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours.”
David, on the other hand, groaned during a trial in his life, “O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way?” David, who is remembered as constantly triumphing over giants, armies, and his own waywardness still felt like you and me waiting on our next vacation to arrive.
Over the last few years (which in some senses have flown by), I’ve done a lot of petitioning to God for things to happen more quickly than they do. More specifically, I’ve been frustrated with my own personal progress and seeing results in my ministry. I regularly catch myself comparing myself to others, thus surrendering my joy. At other times, I give up projects just before the point of breaking through.
So what do we do with a life that speeds out of control at the same moment that it also stands still? I submit that we don’t lose heart or give up, and that we turn to the one who is unaffected by time and surrender our lives to him.
After David agonized about the duration of his trial, he penned,
“But I trust in your unfailing love, I will rejoice because you have rescued me. I will sing to the Lord because he is good to me.”
Amen.