Have you begun to notice how “time” has different speeds? We see “slow time” when we consider the Grand Canyon and the millions of years nature took to carve it. Still growing, the Giant Sequoias are now approaching 2500 yrs. old. Haley’s Comet will cruise by our planet in another 500 years or so. California is moving toward Australia by about 4 inches a year. Nature doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.
“Fast time” is something we humans invented. An hour is still 60 minutes, of course, but fast time changes our experience of those minutes. Aren’t you amazed when dinner with friends is suddenly over? The longawaited vacation has come and gone? You turn 20 or 40 or 60 or 75! “What?! I can’t be that old. Where did the time go?”
“Fast time” has invaded our culture. We have certain expectations that things happen quickly. Waiting is an evil to be avoided. Instant coffee, credit card checkout, microwave dinners, online shopping, create an intolerance for anything that “takes time”.
Technology has been a blessing, of course. It frees us to enjoy our time in ways other than waiting. But it can also keep us from experiencing the part of life that has its own time; things our wishes can’t make any quicker.
Things like:
- Physical maturity.
- Mastering a difficult skill. (It takes 10,000 hours, experts say.)
- Selflessness and generosity. (Marriage and children bring that lesson!)
- Wisdom. (I wish I knew back then what I know now.)
- Character. Virtues like courage, purity, perseverance, need to mature. They need to be “time tested”.
So too, our spiritual life needs time to mature. St. Paul, in a wonderful insight tells us, “When I was a child I thought as a child, acted as a child. When I became an adult, I put away childish things.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
Some of us take longer than others “to put away childish things”. You see this in your own children. Some progress, some “get it” sooner than others.
God knows this too. Think of the patience the Lord has exercised with us. It took the Jews 4,000 years to learn there is but one God and we are his people. It took forty years (two generations) of wandering in the desert to drive home this lesson and we’re still learning.
In two thousand years of Christianity, many wonderful things have happened to God’s People. The Gospel is practiced in every country in the world. Institutions of charity abound. Democracy grows in many places. Yet still there is racism, hunger, war, ignorance.
Why doesn’t God, (who created time by the way), just put us into some spiritual microwave and set the timer for “well done”? Why can’t the saving message of Jesus Christ overwhelm the minds and hearts of humanity and bring about the completion of the Kingdom of God?
That’s not what love does. God, as is revealed in Jesus, has created us to be in a relationship of love and trust. Essential to this relationship is that we humans be FREE to accept or ignore God’s offer. And as we can see . . . this takes time.
How long? The early Christians asked this same question. Scripture responds: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord does not delay his promise. Rather he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:11.
A final thought. The Lord is patient. He can wait for you (or your child or the nation or the world). He’s got all the time in the world. His invitation to join with Christ will never cease, no matter how old we are. Things take time.
Bless you.
Fr. Tim
