"I don't have _______."  "You are wasting my _______."  "I'm just killing ____."  "How do you fill your ________?"  Spending, keeping, marking, making... What is your sense of time?  

First and foremost, time is a gift.  Time is a creation of God, right after the second creation of God — light, which marks time.  In the very first chapter of Genesis, God separates light and darkness, calls one day and one night, and there was evening and morning — the beginning of time, which is declared good(Genesis 1:1-5).  Time is one of creation’s “goods”.  As Thomas Merton explains: “Time for the Christian is then the sphere of his spontaneity, a sacramental gift in which he can allow his freedom to deploy itself in joy.”

Do we receive  time as a good gift from God, the matrix  in which we can allow freedom to “deploy itself in joy”? Do we experience time as one of the many aspects of creation that we are to enjoy and to steward, or do we experience time as a taskmaster? Do we manage time, or does time manage us?

From God’s point of view there is lots of time, an eternity of it.  It follows that there will be plenty of time for what God intends to accomplish.  Personally, I have come to believe that God will give me the time to accomplish what is God’s will for me, and that is time “enough” for me.

The second reflection is that the Bible pushes us to understand time as the matrix of the sacred.  The God of Israel, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, was not a God of place.  Unlike the deities of other Ancient Near Eastern peoples, gods associated with temples, sacred springs, or groves of trees, the God of Israel was the God of events, of happenings in time.  The fact that the Divinity is manifested in history means that time is holy.  “The higher goal of spiritual living is not amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments,” Abraham Heschel writes.  “Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”

Living spiritually demands that we be “present tense” people.  The enormity of the concept of ‘God now” bears serious reflection for people who think their relationship with God is important.  Like Heschel, Paul Tillich believes: “There is no other way of judging time that to see it in the light of the eternal.” What is important about time, in short, is its “God content”.

The third aspect of time I want to discuss is that time is experienced differently in different situations.                   

According to John Donahue, “The quality of our experience always determines the actual rhythm of time.  When you are in pain, every moment slows down until it resembles a week.  When you are happy and really enjoying your life, time flies.”  Time spent with loved ones flies by.  Time spent on a deathbed drags almost unbearably for the loved ones gathered around it.  Three hours in the hospital waiting room during critical surgery is in “real time” much longer than the three hours spent on one’s favorite pastime.

The final reflection or aspect of time to ponder here is the fact that the only time we really have is the present moment, now. 

Now is a gift of God; that is why it is called the present.  The old cliché is true: the past is gone; the future is yet to be. 

If we don’t find God in this present moment, we are unlikely to encounter the Divine at all.  Paul deeply understood this truth and wrote to the Corinthians, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Time is more than chronology.  Time is opportunity.  The Hebrew prophets thought of history as a continuum of times, each filled with its content by God, and, therefore, each demanding a response from people.  The writers of the New Testament clearly thought of themselves as writing in the time of history.  And so we Christians have a particular reason to understand that time is a function of divine disclosure.  It is the arena of salvation.  It is “the means by which God makes use in order to reveal his gracious working.”  Time is valuable because God has entered time and brought eternity into it. 

From Ephesians, we must “make the most of the time” (5:16). What that will mean for each one of us is at the heart of the mystery of our individual and God-given vocation. 

To say that His birth was opposed is to touch the limits of mortal language.  The mighty one has been hated since the pride of the bright one led many away.  Your world war comes close, but even then, believe me, you have no idea.

We sang that night as we had never sung before.  Those shepherds believed they were the primary audience.  True, they were important — the Mighty One has always favored the lowly.  But there was much going on that night.  The other reason we sang in the fields was to hallow the ground where Rachel would weep over her sons.  There the graves would be dug, the graves for the little boys of Bethlehem. 

Herod’s rage soon stripped dozens of firstborns from the breasts of their mothers.  Those so fresh from heaven, so quickly silenced.  Slaughtered like animals.  So much blood.

The town had no room for Mary, and Herod’s heart had no room for another king.  He would not share his glory.

Although we do not exist in time, there are moments when the affairs of earth are hard to endure.  Even Angels desire vengeance. 

“Vengeance is Mine,” declared the Mighty One.  “Justice is coming.  I need you to sing.”

And so we sang. What the shepherds heard as an anthem the innocents would hear as a lullaby.  We sang as we had never sang before. A song to bring Him safely into the world, a song to guide them safely from it, and a song to help Mary endure it:

Glory to God in the heavenly heights,                             
Fly, fly to the breast of the Father,                                     
This wrong will be righted,     
Jesus is here,                      
Peace to all men and women on earth                               
who please Him.                   
Rest, rest in the arms of the Father,                                  
His fury remembers,                
His love holds you dear.   

Many do not sing of this horror at Christmas.  That is understandable; it was an unspeakable deed.  But I remind you that His birth was opposed.  You have no idea.

(This version of the Christmas Story has been adapted from Touching Wonder: Recapturing the Awe of Christmas by John Blasé)

Heaven.  I thought about it as I waited for students to come for their tutorial sessions this afternoon.  It was a combination of the students' faces and the rather large bird's nest nestled in some tree branches that made me think of it. 

I imagine my grandmother as one of the faces of heaven.  I can see her in my mind's eye.  Her bright eyes and lovely smile.  She is covered in light.  For some reason she is offering me something to eat ... her cookies or her famous chicken and rice.

Why don't we talk about heaven more often?  Maybe it's because we are too busy talking about the ills of this world.  The traffic, increasing costs of living, natural disasters, complaints about your job, concerns about family. We should talk about these things, but some time focused upwards, contemplating heaven, could make some of these burdens down here on earth easier to bear. 

Stay with me for a little while with this.  Feel the November wind, a little chilly.  And then let your soul find the warmer place ...

Heaven.

It came down last week.  Heaven touched earth.  I felt it.  The load I was carrying got lighter.  I felt a little stronger and the weight of life was gone.  I had energy.  I enjoyed interactions with students and colleagues.  I laughed a lot at home with my children.  I was able to love and be loved.  Life was a pleasure.

Then that ugly thing called sin crept in.  I didn't repent immediately.  In fact, I got angry.  I knew I was pushing God away but I did it anyway.

Heaven came down again and touched me.  The weight of sin lifted as I lifted my hands to heaven and expressed myself to God.  It's amazing how much God loves us and pursues us.

Heaven is for real.  I can almost feel its breath on my face as I write these words.  

Upstairs, in heaven, sin will be a memory.  Pain will be gone.  Envy won't exist.  Hurts and worries will be a thing of the past.  Our earthly hearts that have begged to be seen, loved, known will know that our souls have stretched towards toward our forever-inheritance.

I like to imagine putting my hand to the heart of Jesus and feeling the rhythm.  His breath on my back and shoulders.  

I imagine physical things as well.  Laying in a hammock.  Running barefoot in the snow feeling fully alive.  Spinning through fields of Queen Anne's lace.  Swimming in a river of warm, clear water.  Riding on the back of the Lion.  Feeding a giraffe.  Painting my house purple.  Not looking the door.  Walking on water, through sand, and no one complaining about dirty feet in the throne room.

Every good thing we want is fulfilled in an actual place where our souls' feet stand, in the presence of the King. 

Heaven.

Think about it.  Reach for it.  Know it is real.  Heaven.