Redeeming Time

R. A. Young

We Christians talk about time a lot, which is odd, considering we say we’re not made for it. Few could claim never to have mourned time’s fleetingness. Children weep over the ends of the summer holidays or of Christmastime. Students moan over how quickly assignments approach, how little sleep they can cram into the few hours of the night. Parents marvel to watch their children grow. The elderly reflect on lives that, however well-lived, were never quite long enough to say what should have been said, to do what should have been done. We comment on how quickly time passes, and reassure ourselves with the thought that we were made for eternity. 

 

C.S. Lewis actually has quite a famous quote to this effect. “For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. ‘How he’s grown!’ we exclaim, ‘How time flies!’ as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the very wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed: unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.”  

 

What I find interesting about all that is that Time isn’t the problem (it existed in the Garden of Eden, after all). The problem is terminus, is transience, is death.  

 

My sister Pippa and I have had an ongoing discussion about this question for a while now. She holds that there won’t be Time in Heaven, since there won’t be death or night. Her argument is for one endless moment, drawn out into all eternity. I always rebut with my case for an endless stream of moments without change. A subtle distinction, but it does make a difference. Humans were made for time, just as they were for work and marriage and all the other good things that began in the Garden. Our issue with Time begins only when it begins marching us toward Death. 

 

Actually, I’ve strayed a bit off my subject. This is a paper about time, not eternity. 

 

For the moment, my point is only that time is not (contrary to popular belief), quote, “bad.” When God establishes the new heavens and the new earth, I think we can expect time to still be around; we’ll still be on earth, after all. That’s not to say we’re not destined for eternity — of course we are! But I think eternity consists of an endless time, not an existence without time. 

 

All that said, God is outside time, and therefore His perspective on it is different and higher than ours. I can’t pretend to understand or appreciate any of that — but neither do I think we should. We are created beings, designed for time and it for us. Contrary to C.S. Lewis, I find that the issue with time, the thing that brings us so much pain, is actually that it leads us inevitably toward endings and partings — toward death.  

 

The author of one of my favourite books, A Severe Mercy, describes moments of time without terminus — moments where time was not in itself a malefactor. These are the moments, I think, where time touches eternity — not moments without time, but moments unpressured by Endings. He says, “[My wife and I] talked about unpressured time — time to sit on stone walls, time to see beauty, time to stare as long as sheep and cows. . . . We had spoken of ‘moments made eternity,’ meaning what are called timeless moments — moments that might be called, indeed, timeful moments. Or time-free moments. And we had clearly understood that the pressure of time was our nearly inescapable awareness of an approaching terminus — the bell about to ring, the holiday about to end, the going down from Oxford foreseen. . . . Life itself was pressured by death, the final terminus. . . . When we speak of Now, we seem to mean the timeless; there is no duration. Awareness of duration, of terminus, spoils Now.” C.S. Lewis’s “wetness of water,” then, becomes the pressure of endings, and not Time itself. 

 

I wrote an essay last semester about time as a theme in literature. It was an academic paper of course, and had no point to make beyond how strange it is that so many sources (both Christian and not) reflect on Time as a cause of great distress. I run through Andrew Marvell’s famous “wingèd chariot” and Robert Frost’s “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” among other things. What I saw, though, was that nowhere was time itself the villain. Marvell fears death’s “deserts of vast eternity.” Frost laments how “leaf subsides to leaf.”  

 

If time didn’t equal death, as far as humans are concerned, we would have a far easier time enjoying it.  

 

But eternal life promises us a future where time does not equal death; and we were created for time; so even in the meantime, there are certain ways we should be approaching it. 

 

I’ll begin from Scripture, as it is (always) the best source, and has much to say on the subject. Ephesians 5:15 tells us to walk “circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time” or, as ESV renders it, “Making the best use of the time,” “because the days are evil.” Clearly, then, there is a best way to use time. The Bible gives us that as well:  

 

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: 

a time to be born, and a time to die; 

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; 

a time to kill, and a time to heal; 

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; 

a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; 

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 

a time to seek, and a time to lose; 

a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 

a time to tear, and a time to sew; 

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 

a time to love, and a time to hate; 

a time for war, and a time for peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. 

 

In other words, What is time to be used for here on earth? Everything! These are familiar words, but none the less poignant. Every year, every day, every moment God gives us has its purpose. In “making the best use of the time,” we are attempting to discern what the time is meant for — seizing opportunities, working hard and resting well, and ever bearing in mind that our days are not our own. 

 

The cycle of work and rest goes on that brief list because God Himself exemplified it in the seven days of creation, established the Sabbath as our day of rest, and reiterates that aspect of life many times throughout the Bible. Speaking of time, I don’t have enough to go through all that, so I’m moving on. 

 

Making the best use of time manifests itself in a multitude of practical ways, not all of which can I outline here. But I can list a few of my favourites. 

 

For one thing, redeeming the time has to involve living within it — which is to say, neither dwelling on the future nor living in the past. I have a sinful tendency toward anxiety which means I spend entirely too much time contemplating the unknown future — a future which is, of course, not mine to control. C.S. Lewis mentions widows and historians as being tempted to live in the past. But, he suggests, “The Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them.” On the most practical of levels, living “in the moment” is something I have not accomplished. But how comforting that we are meant for a place where moments are not an inevitable countdown to endings, where moment after moment passes without break or turning point. 

 

The more apparent application of redeeming the time is not wasting it. There’s a lot to be said about this. For one thing, there's the fact that procrastination, laziness, and the like mean (obviously) that less gets done. The work goes unfinished if everyone puts it off. No reason to debate this point. 

 

Another facet of the same point, though, is how dangerous it can be to waste time — dangerous for souls, not just work ethics. If you’ve spent much time with Petra Publications, you’re familiar with J.C. Ryle, who had much to say on the dangers of idleness. He outlines his thoughts briefly in his paper “Thoughts for Young Men”: “Idleness is . . . much to be avoided. It is not that doing nothing is of itself so positively wicked; it is the opportunity it affords to evil thoughts and vain imaginations; it is the wide door it opens for Satan to throw in the seeds of bad things — it is this which is mainly to be feared. If David had not given occasion to the devil by idling on his housetop at Jerusalem, he would probably never have seen Bathsheba, nor murdered Uriah.”  

 

We have outlined, then, ways to use the time, and ways not to use the time. We have pointed out that time is not our own; it is a gift, and a good gift at that. Our time is limited, and we must be sure to use it wisely, discerning whatever purpose God has intended it for. Of course, in our limited human imaginations we aren’t able to do any of this on our own. With Moses we must pray, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).