“They say time is
money, but that’s not true. Time is
life. And if I want the fullest life, I
need to find fullest time. I wipe a
water spot off the tap; there is a reflection of me. Oh yes, I know you, the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life. I’m the face grieving.
God gives us time. And who has time for God?
Which makes no sense.
In Christ, don’t we have everlasting existence? Don’t Christians have all the time in eternity, life everlasting? If Christians run out of time – wouldn’t we lose our very own existence? If anyone should have time, isn’t it the Christ-followers?
[I think back to an interview with an elderly pastor.] What was the pastor’s most profound regret in life? I hear the answer of the pastor ring.
'Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing...Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."
In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.
Haste makes waste.
And I hear this too, words of another woman seeking: 'On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.' [Evelyn Underhill]
I scrub the bowl hard, try to scrape away the regret of a life lived amateur.
Because that is the way I have lived. The time, always the time, I’m an amateur trying to beat time. In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear. I have done it. I do it still.
I speak it to God: I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done – yesterday.
I just want time to do my one life well.
A soap bubble, skin of light and water and space suspended in sphere. Who has time for that?
Hadn’t I? Only because I was looking. Because that list of one thousand gifts has me always on the hunt for one more...and one more – to behold one more moment pregnant with wonder.
The wonder right in the middle of the sink. Looking for it like this. I lay the palm under water and I raise my hand with the membrane of a life span of moments. In the light, the sheerness of bubble shimmers. Bands of garnet, cobalt, flowing luminous.
362. Suds...all color in sun.
That’s my answer to time.
Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time. When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I only live the fullest life when I live fully in the moment. And when I’m always looking for the next glimpse of glory, I slow and enter. And time slows.
But there’s more. I awake to I AM here. When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In his embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and holy.
Here is the only place I can love him."
-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts
God gives us time. And who has time for God?
Which makes no sense.
In Christ, don’t we have everlasting existence? Don’t Christians have all the time in eternity, life everlasting? If Christians run out of time – wouldn’t we lose our very own existence? If anyone should have time, isn’t it the Christ-followers?
[I think back to an interview with an elderly pastor.] What was the pastor’s most profound regret in life? I hear the answer of the pastor ring.
'Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all the rushing...Through all that haste I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."
In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.
Haste makes waste.
And I hear this too, words of another woman seeking: 'On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.' [Evelyn Underhill]
I scrub the bowl hard, try to scrape away the regret of a life lived amateur.
Because that is the way I have lived. The time, always the time, I’m an amateur trying to beat time. In a world addicted to speed, I blur the moments into one unholy smear. I have done it. I do it still.
I speak it to God: I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done – yesterday.
I just want time to do my one life well.
A soap bubble, skin of light and water and space suspended in sphere. Who has time for that?
Hadn’t I? Only because I was looking. Because that list of one thousand gifts has me always on the hunt for one more...and one more – to behold one more moment pregnant with wonder.
The wonder right in the middle of the sink. Looking for it like this. I lay the palm under water and I raise my hand with the membrane of a life span of moments. In the light, the sheerness of bubble shimmers. Bands of garnet, cobalt, flowing luminous.
362. Suds...all color in sun.
That’s my answer to time.
Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one. And this, this is the only way to slow time. When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I only live the fullest life when I live fully in the moment. And when I’m always looking for the next glimpse of glory, I slow and enter. And time slows.
But there’s more. I awake to I AM here. When I’m present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In his embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and holy.
Here is the only place I can love him."
-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts
