We can be slaves to the tyranny of time, or we can be free.
Read this: Ecclesiastes ch. 3 v. 1-11.
The first part of it must be amongst the most famous pieces of writing in Western Culture, though most people probably don’t know where it comes from. Verse 11 speaks into every restless searcher’s life.
Now read this: 1 Corinthians ch.3 v 21-23.
Recite this out loud:
There is a time.
There’s not just time.
There is a time.
There comes a time;
Appointed time,
Anointed time,
Anticipated, hated time;
Much wanted and unwanted time.
They hide in time.
They bide their time
Until their time;
Until it’s time
For every purpose under heaven.
No sooner born than waiting
For the time to die;
The timing’s right, they’re laughing,
When it’s not the time to cry.
Holes in socks and time warps
Both need a stitch in time.
Harvest’s itching to arrive
Before we’ve tended any vine.
A time for building up
What else but some construction;
To stand fast–until the time,
That is, for its destruction.
A time to throw away
At the end of time to keep;
A time reluctantly to zip it
At the end of time to speak.
Hoping the embrace survives
The time to turn away;
Searching till, despairingly
‘It’ is called a day.
A time to spend romancing
Right up until the break
Of dawn, or of the romance, dancing
Turning to a wake.
Earnestly we gather stones
Just as if it mattered;
Time will come when time’s long gone
Since every stone was scattered.
A trooper screams out ‘Medic!’
As another opens fire.
The time for peace has ended,
With mercenaries on hire.
Etcetera etcetera
And so and so and so;
Etcetera etcetera
And round and round we go.
Craving satisfaction
When time gives us a chance is
To be driven to distraction
By time’s agent—circumstances.
‘My time’s my own.’ It’s not.
Own up. Sign this confession:
‘Time-driven and time’s prisoner,
I am time’s possession.’
Your heart, it has the heart’s disease.
It’s restless, as is mine.
Its rhythm’s from eternity
But it must beat in time.
In Him whose heart was broken,
For whom ages are as hours,
Time present and time future
And the World, it can be ours.
