The Clock is Ticking

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

The Clock is Ticking

            We live and die by the clock, literally.  Look at your birth certificate and it has the time of the day you were born.  And if you’ve seen a death certificate, it has the time the patient or person was declared dead.  In between these two events, we live our lives by the almighty time piece.

            Let me see if I can convince you.  Do you have an alarm clock by your bed?  Almost everyone does.  Do you set it to sound an alarm the time you want to rise in the morning?  We calculate the time it takes to get to work, the time it takes to get ready to leave for work, and that is the time we set the alarm.  That is called “backward planning.”  We leave our homes at nearly the same time every day (unless you’re retired) and see the same cars on the road as well, every day.  Our offices are choreographed to have coverage, essentially staggering lunch times among the employees.  We arrive and leave our workplaces at the same time almost every day.

            My wife and I have dear friends who are affected by time maybe more than others.  The wife works for an investment firm, which of course watches the opening of the New York Stock Exchange and its closing.  The firm is bound by the Exchange’s timetable.  The husband is a private pilot.  His day, when flying, is metered by flight plans, take-off times, and estimated times of arrival.  Of course, in his world, the skies are one big board of moving pieces which are monitored to keep them from trying to occupy the same space at the same time!  It boils down to timing.

            How much time do we have left here on earth?  I asked that question of a friend of mine and he jokingly said there was no way to know, unless a judge tells you!  We can have one day, one month, one year, we just don’t know.  If we don’t know, are we wasting time by thinking we have all the time in the world?

            Was Jesus aware of time?  It has been said that God is not bound by time.  He can see the past, present and the future all at once.  And Jesus told His apostles on many occasions “what must come to pass.”  His human side was bound by time, but being God the Son, He could see what would happen.  He tried to convey to the apostles what they would go through because of His name, and even the tragic deaths each of them would die because of their unwavering faith.  He knew their “time.”

            The clock ticks and time passes.  We can’t get back a single minute that has passed, nor countless yesterdays.  The only time we have is right now.  What we can do is this: we can do everything in our power to become more like Jesus today that we were yesterday, and more like Him tomorrow than we are today.  This is God’s plan for us.

            Devote yourself to God today.  After all, the clock is ticking!  Only God knows when your time is up.  Don’t waste another day without Him.