The concept of time has always overwhelmed me. Think of everything that is held in the balance of time. Deadlines, classes, meetings, the 40-hour work week, and vacation days are just a few of its loyal subjects. Yes, our lives are bound to time in a practical, day-to-day sense, but our relationship to time is so much deeper. We wish to control time—to revisit people and places which now only exist in our memories, to have more time for the here and now, to live in different eras that we feel we belong in rather than the ones in which we do live, to add more years to our lives, and to go back to simpler, easier times like childhood or college. We are controlled by, yet wish to control, time. For me, time, and everything that goes with it, has evoked stress, worry, and awe. I have even written a lengthy poem about time. I just laughed at myself, realizing one of my favorite movies is titled, no shocker here, About Time.
My dad has been teaching a series of lessons at church about science’s compatibility with God, and as he was simplifying one of his favorite lessons for me, he mentioned that God actually began time; time is a created thing. Hours, days, weeks, months, and years, as we know these concepts, all trace back to the rotation of our planet—motion that was begun by God. Our notion of time is unique to the particular rotation of Earth, which God designed, but He set other planets into different motions, and He is certainly not contained in Earth’s specific design, as we are. My dad related this to the Genesis creation story and how the seven days as we know them may look completely different to God. A detail like that in the Genesis story is perhaps written the way it is because we use our human concepts when conceptualizing God’s work. This was certainly a fascinating point, but I zoned out (sorry Dad) as he continued to talk about time because it dawned on me that the stressors of time which probably manifested in that single gray hair I found senior year of college, need not worry me at all, because even time, in its primary and most perplexing sense, is in God’s hands. God controls even the primary, so why should I worry so much about the secondaries, like when my career will begin, or when any particular dream of mine could be fulfilled? God offers us great relief—a sense of peace that only He gives to each and every area of our lives, when we recognize and surrender to His control.
Time was a big factor in my decision to go on this mission trip. I have to be off my parents’ health insurance plan by age 26, and I’ll be 25 the day after I return from my time overseas, which means I have one year, exactly, to get my career going. What if it isn’t the right time to postpone my career? Isn’t the time of a worldwide virus, still without vaccine, the wrong time to travel the world? Is one month in each of the countries I’ll be visiting enough time for me to really help the locals there, physically and spiritually? As I sat in the back of my dad’s car, I realized all the months I’d spent agonizing over these time-related worries dissipate in the knowledge that time is one of God’s wondrous creations. The laptop does not control the computer engineer. Time does not control God, and His call on my life is still being shout. I don’t have all the answers to my previously mentioned questions. Nonetheless, hasn’t God made His timeless commission clear? Don’t I believe that God can work wonders in one month, or one minute, for that matter? I lay at God’s throne the fears and worries I have about time.
“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” -Matthew 6:34
“All glory to Him who alone is God, our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord. All glory, majesty, power, and authority are His before all time, and in the present, and beyond all time! Amen.” -Jude 1:25
