Dear Friends,

As I began to think about what to write for this month’s newsletter, I heard the chimes from our church steeple strike the hour of the day. This got me thinking of how we as people are so conscious of time today. More than any other generation in history we live with an eye on the clock. Our great grandfathers looked up to the sunrise and sunset to determine their working hours. On the other hand we look down at our wristwatches many times a day or the clock on the wall to gauge our activities almost to the minute. In the average person’s working life, between 125,000 and 150,000 hours are invested at a job. That is a statistic that would bewilder our ancestors. But in our time-bound society we accept it with interest.

However, with all our attention to clocks, we still can’t fathom what time itself really is. In this age of space exploration we hear of concepts like “time travel” and distances between stars and planets measured in “light years”. Albert Einstein believed that time is not linear but curved. If one could travel at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, or faster you could travel back in time to when our universe was created. This lead some witty poet to write:

And came back on the previous night.”

The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 5; verse 15, “Make the most of the time.” The modifier is important. It is “the” time that is highlighted, not just time. What does he mean? There are two words in the Bible that are used for time. One is “Chronos” meaning seconds, minutes, hours, days or years of calendar time. “Chronometer” is another name for a clock. That sense of time, by the way, is always regarded as the creation and gift from God. Paul however, does not choose that word for time. He uses “Kairos” not Chronos. Kairos means the opportune time when purposes come to a head, when things fall into place. Kairos means not just that time is passing, but we are getting somewhere. Kairos is time that God himself uses in a special way to bring about His saving plan to fulfillment! In other words, when the time was fully ripe, God sent his Son, born of a woman to redeem us from the curse of sin and the condemnation of the Law (Galatians 4:4). You see time itself, which is a gift from God, has now been visited by his Son. The result is grace and mercy for us all. The opportune moment for trust in Christ’s redeeming work is now at hand for everyone of us. This is what Paul is writing about in the letter to the Ephesians. “Make the most of the time.” As we realize this and incorporate this into our lives, we are delivered from defeatism and the exhaustion of “not having done enough.” The light of Christ’s grace upon us illumines the great words from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes:

In his time.”

Living that truth about time in our own lives gives us a wisdom and peace which is beyond all measure.

Great and eternal purposes of God take time in us as humans. Believing that gives us patience and persistence, both with ourselves and in our relationships with one another. We do not have endless amounts of time. There is an end to our time on earth. That needs repeating, since we assume that there will always be another day to get around to do useful things we have been putting off. But the purposes of God do not end here. He extends his purposes through others after we are gone. And when we are gone, it is not over for us. Eternal life is God’s “Kairos” brought at last to His final intentions, which are without end, without tears, without shame, sin and death! Eternal life has already entered into our time, in our baptism and in the living of the grace of Christ.

Moreover, our calling is not to kill time or kill ourselves by trying to do everything under the sun in our lifetime. We are called by Christ to let his grace be the foundation for measuring our days in wisdom, for investing our faith in deeds of love, for keeping a space in our lives for the quiet of his saving presence, and thus to “make the most of the time.”

C.U. in Church and around! Pastor Brian