Brief is the price we pay for life. This observation was the closing sentence of the letter sent from Queen Elizabeth II, to a moving memorial service televised worldwide, a service which followed the destruction of the Trade Center in New York in 2001. Mary Oliver wrote in her poem, The Summer Day: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
This page is being written in January on my 85th birthday, which number in years is evidence of what we perceive as a long life. At the moment I feel like I will live to be a hundred, so if the perception proves true it will qualify me for the television program that displays, for a moment with a jelly ad, the photos of persons who have made their 100th birthdays on the date. That suggests the impact of time – our fleeting moment. My life seems to have been lived not in 85 years, but in 85 months. My marriage ended with my wife’s death, not the actual 57 years, but seeming like 57 months in my time warp. Little wonder that we are concerned about immortality.
One of the factors of Scripture is time, using perception, natural and spiritual perceptions, beginning and ending. With the introduction of mankind’s rebellion and self-orientation, time becomes an obvious mystery with which one must deal. It is perceived as long or short, and made into a commodity that can be sold for temporary indenture. It is the unseen something that can be made meaningful either in creativity or in waste. We have only so much of it. We do what we can to prolong life, even if the life so lengthened may not have any goal worthy of the effort. Life is too much taken for granted, and much of life is taken up with triviality. We act as though time is trivial, so to make ourselves appear trivial. If I were to live my life over again I would certainly make more of my days, and I made much of them. By the standards of those who study such matters, I am perceived as having scheduled fairly well. I know it could have been better. Most persons know theirs could have been better. Why can we not carry that awareness early to our children for their benefit – even in family and onward in most other factors of lives?
God appears to keep time in its place to accomplish his purposes, which may be confusing to us. One believes in prayer, and prays. The answers may be long in coming, or may be answered even before we ask. Even devout persons wonder why it takes quite as much time as it does to bring them to the point where they feel they are satisfactory in the mind of God. Carnality drags on. Why not hit it now? We believe it will be ended. Why not now? God is not a servant of time, and will do away with time. Earlier in my life when a Bible scholar would assert the end of time I would feel ripples of doubt. What was the sense of it? The scientists made their assault on time. Einstein led by noting that time must have had a beginning, and that it can be bent, so that what we have is not what once pertained. For the person of faith, time becomes an interim tool of God to make a natural way for the human race to enter his eternal kingdom, not as angels, but as persons redeemed for a special love that he has for those created in his image. Cleansed, prepared, matured, Christians in faith will gain the special situation for those who survive time to immortality. Immortality is partly understood with belief in the ending of time, the end of a friendly enemy of mortal (transitional) life. God gives the human race time, some feel it short, some long, depending on issues. The more we do what we ought to do with it, the shorter it seems to be. Time is long only when it is misunderstood or disregarded in meaning. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020