Reflection: Why is living in time so … awkward?
The nature of time is quite the abstract philosophical question – but also, there are few things more fundamental to our lived experience. We talk about it constantly. Can you believe it’s nearly Christmas? Where did the time go? Hasn’t this Zoom meeting been going forever?
We are constantly surprised by time. We are both mortal – fragile creatures, dust, subject to death and decay – and immortal, bearers of the image of God himself, built for an eternity with him. We are caught in the cross-currents between time and eternity. We avidly seek an over-arching coherence to life, but our access to the grand design (“what God has done from beginning to end”) is incomplete at best.
God has laid on humans the burden of both time and eternity. And that will always, in this life, be an experience of discomfort as well as satisfaction in our limited, local toil.
Question: What are your frustrations with living in time? What about your here and now is God calling you to commit to, and be thankful in?
Prayer: Lord of Eternity, you are limitless, I am so limited. You hold all of history in your hand; I cannot grasp the wonder of your works. Open my eyes to the beauty around me. Help me to do good and find satisfaction in the tasks I set my hand to. Amen.