A lot of the morning people who, in my estimation “rule the world,” are not happy about having to wait for the sun to come up. Personally, I’m looking forward to an extra hour at day’s end. Either way Gandalf had it right in the Fellowship of the Ring when he said, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Lately I’ve been talking a lot in church about time given to us as a different kind of time. Times that are not measured by hours we can skip ahead to or fall back to on a clock. We’ve been referring to the good times, the sad times, the moments that go on forever, the minutes where time stands still. This kind of time when we are especially aware of the presence of the holy, we’ve been calling “God’s kind of time.”
In the bible, Jesus tells stories, called parables, about when these kinds of time occur. Jesus mixes his metaphors at the beginning of these stories and refers to these kinds of time as a place; he calls them The Kingdom of Heaven or The Kingdom of God. Often he will unashamedly mix in another metaphor and refer to this place, which is really a kind of time, as being like a party or banquet where everyone is invited to come but not everyone sees the value of attending.
Whether you enjoy Daylight Saving Time or not, this weekend when you spring your clock ahead an hour, it’s a good time to reflect upon the times you have joined God’s party and the times you showed up late. God’s kind of time can happen anytime; it doesn’t depend on the hour of the day…it depends on our openness to receive God’s invitation and our readiness to step into the kind of times, the rhythm of life that God is offering us.
Keep the Faith,
Pastor Dan