Rejoicing in the Story of Time

One of the realities of life is time. In a sense, time is just a measurement of motion; time is just keeping track of the distance our planet flies through space to get around the sun, keeping track of how many times light and darkness trade places, measuring shadows growing and shrinking and disappearing. But since we are Christians we know that we move and live and have our being in the Triune God. Theoretically, if God wanted, he could stop everything at once. But the Holy Spirit continues to hover over the world, creating and re-creating, wooing creation to its climax, singing the song of history with words we do not understand. This means that God loves time; he loves the motion of the world, the dance of life, the rising and setting sun, the revolving seasons, the young, the middle aged, and the old. God loves stories that begin, grow, climax, resolve, and end. The psalm says that God has written all of our days in his book even before there were any. God has written the story of all our lives, and here we are gathered for worship, gathered to give thanks, gathered to remember, and gathered to look forward. And this is the point: it is a great and glorious mystery that our God who is good and just can sing the story of history which includes so many difficult things. But without difficult things there is no story. Without any problems there is no plot. We serve the master poet, the storyteller par excellence, and he knows what he’s doing. The question is: do you trust him? Put away your fear. Put away your bitterness. Do not worry. Give thanks for the moments, the hours, the days, the weeks; rejoice in the gift of time. God rejoices in the story of time because it is his story, and therefore we are called to trust him.