time

There is one thing certain about time as we experience it: Time sure does fly. Another week is nearly finished, and we're well onto finishing another year. Year after year keeps going by, thankfully in increments of day after day, and in those days, hour after hour, the minutes and seconds ticking away.

I love the psalmist's prayer, Moses':

12 Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
(TNIV)

12Teach us to use wisely
all the time we have.
(CEV)

12 Teach us to realize the brevity of life,
so that we may grow in wisdom.
(NLT)

The older we get the more we should realize this. To fail to do so is to be living in denial, something we humans are all too prone to do.

And it would seem that while we'll always be aware of how we continue to fall short of full maturity to Christ, we should be able to look back a few years and realize that God has helped us to grow through that time. And wisdom in Scripture is not just about what one knows, but how one lives.

Hopefully my remaining days will be more and more filled with what pleases God, and really ends up to the greatest good and pleasure of us all.

What would you like to add here?

time

An important and necessary element to consider in the walk of faith is simply time. Time is essential for many reasons, but that doesn't go together well with our push button, instant everything society and culture in which we live. We want what we want now, and we can get it. But the walk of faith is different.

It is a walk no less, and requires an ongoing faith which in itself requires patience. It's an ongoing faith in God and in the promises of God given to us in Jesus. It's a faith in which the process might be more important than the answers that faith await. A mature faith will keep looking to God no matter what else is going on around us.

I'm glad faith is what is needed and not perfection. I must keep trusting God and looking to God both in my heart, and by what I keep doing, even when I know I don't have it together inside. Faith is not about moving on because of circumstances, but is more about moving on in spite of them in this life.

So time can bring about the answers we look for. Or move us toward them. The answers we're looking for being the ones God has made plain are his will for his people from Scripture in and through Jesus.

So for me this means in a true sense, slow down. Though I can't slow down in some of my work, slow down in my attitudes toward God and others, and even toward myself. God in time will make all things beautiful in the end in Christ. And that's a process in the new creation in Jesus, which begins now.

What thoughts would you like to share on this?

change takes time

I was recently reminded of a maxim good for us to remember in the Chrisitian life: Change takes time.

When one comes to Christ in conversion, often they want to radically follow the Lord in everything, for indeed all things are brand new to them. That is good, and we should want to so follow.

But sooner or later the testings begin to come. After a time God may seem distant, or not present, certainly not as in the early days of salvation. And following the Lord seems more difficult.

Actually part of what is happening is that one is coming to a fuller realization of what following the Lord means, and who they are, their deficiencies. And that all is not well with the world. There's an actual battle we're in.

Change takes time. For me that is good when it seems like I have a day in which I seem to be going backward in my heart and walk in God. A day like yesterday. What is needed is grace. Grace to know that God is still God, that the true stable growth and change comes over time. It is incremental, certainly with growing pains, but also with needed pruning as in humbling. A deepening in our hearts in relation to God, to others, to ourselves, and to God's place for us.

What would you like to add to these words on change?

slowing down

I find myself overly busy now with a project I need to get done, and other things I want to do. Too many things, too little time! Add to that, we lose an hour this weekend, for Daylight Saving Time.

Unlike some who are gifted and can go through a book in no time with good comprehension, I do best taking my time. Sifting, thinking, pondering, continuing to read. Some of us are wired to keep asking questions and search. Though I think on a certain level this is part of the dynamic God wants for all of his children in this life. And surely in a manner having both continuity and discontinuity in the next as well.

I think we do well to slow down in what we do. I remember one of my favorite people I've had the privilege to meet and get to know a little: Dr. Ted Rendall. He was the Pastor of Prairie Tabernacle and President of Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada when I attended there.

One time I visited him in his office. He told me he was a few months behind in work that needed to be done, yet he wasn't rushed at all while talking to me. He listened well, and talked with deliberation, just the opposite of being in a hurry. And our time was most helpful for me.

I imagine Dr. Rendall was behind in large part because he was so gifted and was an example of following Christ, to all. But Dr. Rendall had within him a sense of not being in a hurry, of doing what he had to do well, to God's glory.

I never remember one class or sermon which was not stimulating and interesting, and all he did seemed to have the blessing of God on it. I remember him for a number of things (like humility, speaking the truth in love, and "life"). And one of them was that he never came across as being in a hurry.

I find this in Jesus as well. He seemed to be on God's time, not on people's. Of course living in this world requires living on the same cycles as the rest of humankind. But how we live them is what's important.

Does this mean I should never be in a hurry? I have to be sometimes at work. But I'm learning to slow down and seek in that to be in time more with God. Something I know so little about, but I think related to the moving of the Spirit and God's leading in our lives. As well as walking by the Spirit.

Does anyone want to add to these ponderings?