Driving back through British Columbia from our vacation my son was using his cell phone and noted that the time was 12:05PM. A few minutes later we saw a sign telling us that we were entering Mountain Standard Time. My son then looked again at his phone and was surprised that it already indicated that the time was 1:08PM. How did the phone know that we had just crossed some invisible line? The conversation continued with this exclamation from my son, “Dad, we just lost an hour of our lives!” I didn’t mention that we gained one on the way out! Who says we can’t time travel?!

Now that got me to thinking about time. Time. We had just spent time away on vacation. But wait, can one really spend time? Can time be consumed or used up? An easy answer, is “no.” Time just keeps rolling along.  On our vacation, we had a good time. Is time ever good or bad? People ask, “Can you spare me a few minutes?” Is time ever “spare?” A friend asked, “Do you have time for lunch?” Is time something for me to “have?”

Christopher Dewdney in his book, Soul of the World; Unlocking the Secrets of Time, quotes Yogi Berra who replied when asked what time is it, “You mean now?” Time is always on the move. I can’t spend it, own it, hold it, give it or share it. I live in it. The circadian rhythm of night and day is the basic measure of our lives. And yet in that rhythm everything we know, experience, perceive, and feel happens. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, life is lived. Those moments are measured in days, weeks, months, years, decades, and centuries – even in seconds, milliseconds, Nanoseconds and ever smaller measurements.  A year consists of approximately 31,104,000 seconds.  A second – one, one thousand – and it’s gone or is it?

In the Christian scriptures, there are two words for time – chronos and Kairos.  Chronos is a measurement of time that is linear. It is the keeping of time. Kairos is the right time or opportune time. You know this time too – when you were somewhere at the right time you experienced Kairos. I experienced the right time one dark night on our vacation when I witnessed the meteorite shower that illumines our August skies. It was opportune in every way – no moon, far away from city lights, clear skies, and of course the time of year for the perseid meteorite shower.

Jesus declares that the time is now. “You mean now?” Yes, now. The time is full and ripe with opportunity – every second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and year. I look ahead to the fall, we call that the future, and I plan. However, right now I want every second to be lived fully. Living in time more than measuring it, anticipating it, or even remembering it is what I seek.

Dewdney says in his book, “The management of time may turn out to be our greatest achievement, far out shadowing any giant engineering projects of our distant future. Time is the final resource…”  And concludes by saying:

Our future lies, not ahead but within (time) and if every second contains a near eternity (and he argues that it does), then are we not, in one very real sense, already immortal? And even though we are as unconscious of our immortality as an elephant is of the ants that crawl over its hide, we nonetheless exist within eternity, and our lives, however brief, stretch for countless eons within each minute, infinities within each hour.

This is the eternal now.
The time is at hand! “Now we are – this is our time” (Paul Tillich).