From the Pastor . . .

The other evening I came across the movie Cast Away on television. In the movie Tom Hanks plays a systems manager for FedEx and in the process of training new employees and trying to impress on them the importance of making every second count he says, "We cannot commit the sin of turning our back on time." The irony of the movie is that soon after that his plane goes down in the south Pacific and he is marooned on a tiny island with nothing but time.

One of the most common struggles among us is our struggle with time. We are a busy people: work, community commitments, family responsibilities, school activities, volunteering, the needs of our church, friendships and family relationships that need our time, and then we are told we need to make time for self-care, exercise and just time to reflect as well as time to pray. Sometimes it feels like we live always with the clock ticking in our ears, like there just isn’t enough time.

I am not a time management expert and I don’t have much advice to give you as to how to free yourself from the tyranny of time, but I do know that you and I have been given time. It is January and we are just opening the gift of a whole new year that our Lord has given us. God is very fair in the distribution of this gift. All of us, every single one of us, will get 12 months, 366 days (An extra one this year.), 8784 hours, 527,040 minutes.

The difference in how we experience our time this year will be in how we spend it. We can spend it in anxiousness, worrying about how fast it’s going. We can spend it in regret, or anger, or fear, or frantically trying to make something of ourselves. If we do, the clock will bear down hard and the ticking will set us on edge.

On the other hand we can spend the same time in the knowledge that the giver of this new year will be with us as we go through it. We can trust him to give us the energy and strength needed for each days needs. We can begin each day praying for his arm to bear us up. We can use the time he has cleared away each Sunday to hear is Word and his forgiveness and so have reason to hope. We can remind ourselves that this year is only the beginning of the time God is going to give us, that he Jesus has opened to us the way to his kingdom whose days and hours are without number.

If we do these things the clock will not be a tyrant, the ticking will not strike fear in us as the minutes slip through our fingers like sand. If we look to and listen to and trust the one who gives us this new year, then each tick of the clock, each chime marking a new hour will be a reminder of the good gift of time and of how it is opening up God’s future. A blessed new year to you all, enjoy the time.

Pastor Terrill