Becoming Spiritual Timekeepers

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

I'm a big fan of the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I love his advice. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't slow down and look around every once in a while, you might miss it. It's great advice. I think, especially as we enter the fall, for many of us, our lives are just running around like crazy. We're in the midst of a series where we talk about how we can enter rest amidst the race. In the midst of the everyday and the busyness, how can we still find this rest that God offers us?

What I want to talk about today is how we have to change our relationship with time. in order to access that rest. We want to become spiritual timekeepers.

The author of Ecclesiastes makes this observation, that God has given human beings the business of life, and it keeps them busy. And he's given them a sense of the future and a memory of the past, and that what would be best is for them to be able to find joy in the midst of their toil, and that what God does endures forever. And that's great advice for us. If we want to follow those things, I think it'll help us. If we want to have a healthier relationship with time in order to enter this rest, we want to become spiritual time keepers.

The way we become spiritual time keepers involves three things. One, It's about accepting and embracing the idea that you and I are creatures of time. Secondly, we want to understand that life moves in seasons. And so we want to embrace the season we're in. And then finally, because what God does endures forever, we want to live in light of the cross and the resurrection. Because that is God entering time and transforming it forever.

Let me sketch this out. So we are creatures of time. You and I show up, wherever we go, with a past, and we carry that past with us. And then we act, and that lives out in the midst of a context, and that context has a history that has built up to it.

And you and I didn't plan it. We're just there. We're a part of it. We're thrown into it. Meanwhile, as we enter and we act, we also have this imagined future. This place in which we're hoping we go towards, and that's true for us all the time.

Recently, I was at a soccer game and ran into a buddy of mine. We went to high school together. Well, funny enough, it turns out that our sons are now going to high school together. And how crazy it is that we're in the same place that doesn't seem like that long ago we were there together, and now we're there together again, but with a sense of the past and also a sense of the future as we think about talking about where our sons are going to go off to college.

And that's true for us. Everywhere we go, you and I are creatures of time. The past impacts us. We have thoughts about the future. And yet the present is the only place that we can live. And so one of the things that I think we need to do to become spiritual time keepers is we have to accept that we are creatures of time. That time frames our life.

And this doesn't have to be something that stresses us out, in which we're worried about whether we have enough time, or we are wishing the time would go faster. But rather, we just accept that you and I are always playing out in the context of time. And why I think this is helpful is it frames our life.

We understand that we have a past. We understand that we're living out in the midst of a context of history. We understand that we're aware of the future. But the only thing we can do is pay attention to the present. And so I think we always want to ask ourselves, how is our life unfolding in this moment?

We should think about it like a wave crashing on the shore. As one wave crashes, the first wave is receding in the shore. So we have the past and the present and the future all happening at the same time. We want to embrace that. Be aware of it. And understand that when we are willing to accept the limitations of time, be aware of how it has shaped us. That we can enter into life more fully. We can pay attention. as Ferris Bueller says. And that's going to reduce our anxiety and our worry and our wonder, because we're going to find ourselves more present in the frame that we find ourselves in.

So to be spiritual time keepers, we want to be creatures of time. We want to accept that. And second, we want to embrace every season. The author of Ecclesiastes says there's a season for everything. There's a season for life, there's a season for death, there's a season for birth, there's a season for peace, there's a season for war. There's all these different seasons.

And ultimately what we all hope for is the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. We want to do our work. We want to act as humans and we want to be able to do that in such a way where we find joy. And all of that happens in the present. I want you to think about this. You can't experience anything other than the present.

And so the peace you're looking for, the joy you're looking for, the love you're looking for, it's all in the present. And that's going to happen by connecting to God and connecting to others and connecting to the world around you and allowing yourselves to experience it. But rather than embrace the present season we're in, we often get lost.

We get lost by ruminating in the past. We get lost by focusing on the future, or rather than entering in the present, we escape it. So let me ask you, which one of that, of those describes you? Do you spend a lot of time in the woulda, shoulda, couldas, if this, had only of the past and it prevents you from experiencing the love and joy and peace and happiness in the present?

Maybe like me, you're always thinking about the future, and what could be, and what might be, and what, what should be. And so you're always wrestling and working, but in the midst of that, you're missing what's right in front of you. Maybe for some of you, you're just escaping the present. The 10 hour Netflix binge just helped you not put your mind on anything in the present, and you just escaped it.

But the rest that God offers us, what we're all hoping, even in the midst of the busyness and the challenge of life, happens when we are willing to engage the present, to be a part of time.

Now, the question is, what has to shift for us to do that? And I think a lot of it comes down to where are we putting our attention. If our attention is on the past, or our attention is on the future, or our attention is on something that's helping us escape, then we can't see it, experience it. But if we give our attention to the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, if we give our attention to our friends and family, if we give our attention to the work and we're present, then in those moments, we're going to enter into the fullness of time.

We're going to enter in to God's rest. So what are you giving your attention to?

Okay. So we want to be creatures of time. We want to accept that that's true. We want to embrace the season we're in. And then lastly, in order to become a spiritual timekeeper, we want to live in the light of Jesus death and resurrection.

The author of Ecclesiastes says that what God does endures forever. And what I love about that is, we have this reality in which, in the person of Christ, God enters time. God lives, God dies, and God rises again. And that's Jesus story. And that didn't happen as a metaphor, it happened in history. And so it transforms time.

And two things happen in the midst of it. In the cross, we see the condemnation of death and evil. In resurrection, we see hope take square permanence in time itself. Hope and renewal and restoration. And so that always offers up to us this question of, well, what do I do now? In light of Jesus death and resurrection, how do I live today?

How do I do that now? Because what it does is it allows us to accept the past and understand that some of it is to be wiped away. Some of it is to be overcome, but it also says that in the midst of it, it can't be the final word that restoration and hope is available to us. And so whether we're dealing with our own past or the past of a people, as we move forward, we can ask ourselves, what do I do now?

How do I live now? How do I condemn the death and evil and brokenness that has happened? And how do I lean in towards restoration and renewal. And as I live out my days with that orientation towards time, one in which resurrection is always there, that it has become pregnant in time, allows us to experience the rest that we're looking for.

So I hope as you go through this fall, you'll change your relationship to time. You'll become a spiritual timekeeper. Accepting and embracing that you are a creature of time, leaning into the season you find yourself and living in light of the cross and the resurrection of Christ. Have a great week.

We'll see you again next Sunday.