Time is a mystery that has fascinated and frustrated humans for thousands of years!

Should you ever visit our home, the first thing you would notice is that we have more than the usual number of clocks around the place 😊.  As collections go, our clock family is small, but most of them have something in common – a restless and relentless pendulum marking time. Peter can’t resist the challenge they present and carefully ‘husbands’ them, winding the clocks faithfully, keeping tabs on whether they lose or gain time and adjusting them with great care. I do NOT wind the clocks – this is Best Beloved’s job, and a swinging pendulum is a sure sign that he is home.  

I think trying to control the passage of time has made us slaves to it. The days are long gone when people rose and went to bed by the natural rhythms of nature. Device in hand, we check off the moments of our lives with atomic precision, still complaining of not having enough time. This is intimidating, to say the least. If we’re not wise, we end up going to bed with minds whirling so frantically between what we have or have not done that there is no chance of rest!

Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells me, “God has set eternity in the human heart.” By His design, we possess an innate knowledge that there is something more to life than what we can see and experience in the here and now, Wonderfully, as we grow in our relationship with God, the time comes when we gratefully acknowledge with the Psalmist, “Lord, my times are in Your hand…” This is sacred knowledge, this is peace. I think of it like this. I move through earthly time in a straight line, but God is all around – birth and death are overshadowed simultaneously by the Alpha and Omega, and “He makes known the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10). No wonder Paul says, “In Him we live, and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

One of my favorite poem-hymns is “Oh God our help in ages past” by Isaac Watts and the last two verses say it beautifully:

“Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

bears all its sons away;

they fly forgotten, as a dream

dies at the op'ning day.

Oh God, our Help in ages past,

our Hope for years to come,

be Thou our Guide while life shall last,

and our eternal Home!”

May 2024 be a year in which we all revel in the timeless presence of our amazing God!