Taking Time

How often do we take time? Time to stop. Time to be.

Do we view time as a gift, or a curse? Does it always seem that there isn't enough time, , or as Bruce Cockburn wrote "Sometimes you feel like you've lived too long
Days drip slowly on the page"?  (Pacing the Cage - from 'The Charity of Night' 1996)

Each of us has our own time, everyone has the same allocation at the start of every day - we can fill the day with activity, use it for rest, we can work, play, pray, sing, dance, relax, listen, laugh, love, shop, read, walk, sit, hug, hope or use it any way we choose.  What we cannot to is hold on to it, keep it, store it, save it for later.

Advent is a season about time. It is a season of waiting and expectation - preparing for the coming of Christ in the celebration of Christmas. It is a season that reminds us of the God of eternity who chose to be bounded by time and fully incarnated in the moments of the life of Jesus Christ. It is a season that reminds us that, like awaiting a birth, there is a timeliness to our lives and we can take time, or we can lose it. 

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, this Advent, take time, make time to be rather than just to do. Take a pause. 

 

 

Ecclesiastes Chapter Three, verses 1-8


There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance, 

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

  

"The Secret Of Time" Lyrics 
by Charlie Peacock | from the album The Secret Of Time

Time is a gift of love and grace,
Without time there'd be no time to change,
Time to be tried, humbled and broken,
Time to hear the word of love spoken.

I see the mission up ahead of me and I tremble as one shaken; but if I have the eyes of faith, the eyes to see, I will leave the outcome in the hands of the one who called me,
And over and over I must learn and relearn that whether I decrease or whether I increase is not my concern. (not my concern, no)

Deliver me from strategy, from endless clever thinking,
Set my sights upon the shore, keep this boat from sinking down,
Let me taste of a fresh wind of reason and stir the gift within, for I am not a boat left to drift at sea,
I remain in you and you remain in me,
There is no great distance between you and I.

The moment I found out who you were, I found out who I was,
The silence covered me and the tears began to fall,
I could see...I could see what a great and grand...great and grand act of affection it's all been, (time that is, time that is, talk about time that is, time that is)
My history is written through the choices I make,
Let me sing just ten true words,
I'd rather sing just ten true words than a hundred words that in the end amount to nothing...absolutely nothing