Taking time

by Deacon Jackie Fowler

Airedale Methodist Circuit

IT seems that we are governed by time – we have clocks on our phones and computers, in our homes, in workplaces, in public places, everywhere it seems.

We are conscious of time, of the need to be in certain places, of keeping appointments; and certainly if we did not adhere to time, chaos would soon reign!

However, there is always the danger that we are ‘on time’ and yet don’t ‘have time’.

A friend from Tanzania once said to me "in your country you have watches, in my country we have time".

The poet, WH Davies, wrote: "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?"

He is I think suggesting the importance of taking time to ‘be’ rather than to do – we are after all human beings not human doings!

The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible puts it this way, "for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven", suggesting that there is time for everything we experience and that the times are in God’s hands. God has an endless timespan – He is eternal and sees the whole picture from beginning to end.

God entered ‘our time’ in coming as Jesus; as St Paul writes to the early church, "at just the right time God sent His son".

In this first month of the year perhaps it’s worth taking some time to stand and stare, to reflect on the coming of Jesus and perhaps to catch a glimpse of God in the world around us.