Devotional/Discussion Thought of the Day:

¹⁵  So watch your step. Use your head. ¹⁶  Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! ¹⁷  Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants. ¹⁸  Don’t drink too much wine. That cheapens your life. Drink the Spirit of God, huge draughts of him. ¹⁹  Sing hymns instead of drinking songs! Sing songs from your heart to Christ. ²⁰  Sing praises over everything, any excuse for a song to God the Father in the name of our Master, Jesus Christ.  Ephesians 5:15-20 (MSG) 

“There is also, he added, “another richness in our culture”, another richness that prevents us from getting close to Jesus: it’s our fascination for the temporary”. We, he observed, are “in love with the provisional”. We don’t like Jesus’s “definitive proposals”. Instead we like what is temporary because “we are afraid of God’s time” which is definitive.  “He is the Lord of time; we are the masters of the moment. Why? Because we are in command of the moment: I will follow the Lord up to this point, and then I will see… I heard of a man who wanted to become a priest – but only for ten years, not any longer…” Attraction for the provisional: this is a richness. We want to become masters of time, we live for the moment.  ( Pope Francis’s honily this day… from Catholic News Agency)

We live in a world that is, as Pope says, fascinated with “the temporary”.  We look to the short term investments to make a killing, we lease cars so that in two or three years, we can buy a new one.  We buy into a system that causes us to replace our cell phones, our tablets, our computers every two or three years.   We hear that young people will not have one career in their lives – but 3 or 4 or more (heck , I am on my third…)  And less we forget marriage, people trade in their lifetime commitments like they were library books.

I labelled this blog – the “Idol of Time” because that is what it appears to be.  Yet I think the Pope sees it very clearly – this is an Idol, because while we claim to value it, we also want to desperately control it.  That’s the thing about idols – they are far easier to control than God is, who as CS Lewis put it (and Chesterton as well) God cannot be tamed.  So we try to become Master’s of our own time – setting up calendars and planning our next moves, working to see what new thing we can distract ourselves with for the moment, thinking that we’ve got it all now.  Then the next commercial makes us realize we are out of date already.

That’s why we are attracted to the temporary, to that which is unsustainable, to that which needs to be replaced.

But what id we were to focus on that which endures – that which is sustained – that which has a meaning that can never be replaced?

What if we understood the will of God, what if we took the time in prayer, and in reading His word, and in finding encouragement as we fellowshipped with those who also knew His love?  What if our joy was found in seeing people cleansed and healed and finding God’s presence – not far off in some othre universe, or even on vacation in a gloriously beautiful place like the mountains of New Hampshire, or Rome, or China?  What if we found God’s incredible majestic presence in our homes, our work places, our cars as we drive – and yes… our churches.  Would we then look at those places differently?  Would we find contentment in the simplicity of knowing He is there?

Would we find the joy that would explode in our singing praises?

Let God manage our time, let Him redeem it, let Him show us His will… His love, His mercy…His peace…and an eternity of wonder and awe and…Him

Jesus Christ Crucifix (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• Why our Idolatry is Worthless (justifiedandsinner.com)