The One with all the Time

Time is a funny thing. If you are having fun an hour can pass so quickly that you feel like it was only 5 minutes, but if you are anxiously awaiting a great event such as opening presents on Christmas morning, 1 hour can feel more like 10.

The American society has an obsession with time.

As we get older, there is more pressure to concur the big adventures in life by a certain time. We feel the pressure to get married by a certain age, buy a house by a certain age, hold a management position by a certain age, and the ever present pressure of Mennonite society to procreate before you are 30. If you do any of these things earlier or later than the average society member, a lot of attention is paid to you. The timelines are different if you live in a city or small town. We use time as a way to measure how far we have come since a prior event, or to make something that happened seem further away.

Time is not a bad thing. It is actually very helpful in running a society. The issue comes into play when we put pressure, shame, blame, and guilt on ourselves for not accomplishing everything we wanted to accomplish by a certain time frame. We often fall into the trip of “getting old” feeling like since we haven’t accomplished it yet and don’t see it in the foreseeable future, we start to believe that it will never happen. The old phrase, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” doesn’t hold up very well when you see ladies in their 90’s graduating from high school. It is all in a mindset and not a clock or calendar.

You see, God doesn’t see the beginning from the end. He works on His own time schedule. Unlike us, he doesn’t get stressed out by the pressure of society if we aren’t married by the time we are 25 or still rent an apartment at the age of 35 when we expected to have a pool in the backyard and a white picket fence by now. He sees the bigger picture and His timing is always perfect because it is based on our best interest instead of emotions. Instead of stressing about when events will happen or laying on the floor having temper tantrums because what we think should happen in our expected time frame hasn’t, let’s put our energy to good use and prepare our lives for the desired event. It might look crazy to those around us, but then you will be in good company as I am sure that people told Noah he was crazy when he was building the ark.