I recently caught the flu. It was a miserable few days of aches and pains, sleepless nights and myriad medicines.
It was not improved by the well meaning but constant barrage of tips and advice from both family and perfect strangers on the best ways to combat this illness. It seems when we see someone trying to fight through something, we all become experts on that topic.
Such it is with the coming of a new year.
At the end of the year, everyone becomes a poet, a scholar, a historian, an alliterative genius. Even prophetic gifts are bestowed on those that haven’t read a passage from Isaiah since last Easter. We all seem to gain perspective and wisdom, and we can’t wait to share it. Just one glance at your Facebook or Twitter feed today is all the evidence you need.
It certainly isn’t a bad thing to be reflective. But I wonder why we feel this urge to become wise and reflective from one 24 hour period to the next. It’s common knowledge that most of our resolutions and revelations will be forgotten in a few weeks, yet we feel we must make some assessment of the past and a declaration for the future. It almost feels wrong not to do so.
I believe God gave us a desire to know and share the wisdom that time provides us. We are innately aware of the principles of Ecclesiastes – “To everything there is a season” – and of Psalm 90:12, where Moses opines on our mortality, then asks God to “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom”. Every human being understands that as time passes we are supposed to gain wisdom from our lives’ experience on how to live better.
The problem is that time was never supposed to be our only teacher.
As we were originally created, we were supposed to live eternally. Sin made that eternity a promise we would have to wait for. God saw that we didn’t learn what we needed to learn in our chance with eternity, so He gave us a tutor – time. Eternity is no longer an unbroken reality for us, but Ecclesiastes also states that ‘God set eternity in our hearts’. So, we know we are supposed to have an eternal view of life, yet we are cornered into a finite, time – based view of our reality. Now, like any patient but frustrated tutor , Time tries to teach us what we could have learned from the Father directly, simply by listening to Him.
Even with this gracious gift of wisdom, we then make another costly mistake, which makes all the pithy sayings and New Year’s declarations sound hollow. We make Time our ultimate teacher, and forget the Creator of time. Sure, we number our days, but we forget that Moses started the verse as a request to God to “TEACH US”. We apply our hearts to our OWN wisdom, and not His. That’s why I feel all the words we hear seem to fade quickly, with no staying power. We are lost in a swirl of good wishes, ideas, and hopes for every season that have nothing to do with our eternal destiny, because we traded out the wisdom of the Father for the temporary wisdom of a calendar and life experience.
Times and seasons become our new idols, and the creator of Time is lost in the shuffle of grand expectations that, in the light of eternity, really don’t matter very much.
I’m not knocking speaking good words over a season or a new year. I’m simply reminding myself that if I don’t acknowledge God’s command over my life and the times of my life, all my New Year’s declarations are just a crutch that will fail me just like any other earthly source of encouragement.
If I don’t remember to worship the God of the season, then the season becomes my god.
So as we read all the great things that we expect from 2014, just take a deep breath and realize that God doesn’t stress out during a earthly calendar page turn. What happens in the next year won’t be a surprise to Him, and therefore you can relax if you don’t have a witty promise to repeat, or a new revelation to declare over the year. If you are are a follower of Jesus, you can be content with the words He said as he left earth approximately 1,981 years ago.
“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
I think “always” includes 2014. That makes it a Happy New Year.
Jasbir Singh says
Thanks for sharing your reflection, and the idea that time is now our “tutor”. It surely would have been much better if the first man and woman listened to Him! We are all longing for that eternal place – outside of time. At least we have a helping hand – the Holy Spirit, which He also gave to us when He returned to the Father. Before my three young children go to sleep, we always call upon their guardian angels to watch over them.
Allen P. says
It was my pleasure and thanks for reading! While eternity is certainly a better option, our current state of life in time is just another example how God can use anything to help us learn about Him – even the passing of time. God bless you and your family.