Time is in God's Hands

Curate's Contemplations:

The recent clock change has got me thinking about time and how it seems to have sped up. Nowadays, it never feels like there is enough time to get everything done, or perhaps, if you are in a season of life where you feel you do have enough time to get your own things done, the speed of the world around us feels out of control. The modern world often feels like we are trying to catch up.

In Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, there are famous words which start ‘there is a time for everything’ and off it goes, listing all sorts of things in life, each of which has its time and in due course is replaced, or disappears, every good and bad season eventually passes. The point of this part of Ecclesiastes is to show us that in the fabric of the world, everything has its season; the passing of time means that nothing lasts forever. Each aspect of our lives has its time and is eventually whisked away.

For all of us, time keeps rolling by seemingly faster than ever, which can leave us trying to control things in some way, either by reminiscing or trying to control the future. As the passing of time is beyond our control, enjoying the present can feel elusive, like trying to stay still on an escalator which keeps on moving. So what then is the solution to enjoying the present?

I believe in part it is to loosen our grip and let God be in charge, to remember that although we cannot control time, time is in God’s hands. As Bobby Jamieson puts it in his book Everything Is Never Enough, ‘God writes time in permanent marker, leaving us no chance to erase or revise so that we will come to discern the infinite difference between author and characters. So that we will come to consider history not as a tale told by an idiot but the steady, inscrutable handwriting of the living God.’

The fact we cannot pin time down and are easily distracted away by the past or the future shows that we are longing for something more, longing for a season of life which lasts or, as Ecclesiastes puts it, that God has ‘set eternity in the human heart’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11). An eternity where time no longer runs away from us, causing us to struggle to keep up. Instead, we will be forever with the living God in his presence. What we have to look forward to is a time when the clocks will be changed once and for all, and we will have a timeless enjoyment of God for eternity.

So as time keeps rolling by, and we gradually begin to look towards Advent and Christmas, a busy season for many of us, an act of great faith is to live in the present. Fully aware that we are not in control, we cannot control time, yet because God gives us a part of the great tapestry of history, we are privileged enough to know the one who does.