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Old Folks Talk
“What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they leave; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.”
Ecclesiastes 3:9-15 (NRSV)
I stood and watched the door of my microwave as the seconds ticked off while I heated my coffee beyond the tepid temperature we can achieve at 6800 feet above sea level with just the electric percolator.
After my coffee was boiling, although not all that hot, I thought about what I had just done—wasted precious moments of my life standing there staring at a microwave doing its thing.
Time is a very odd phenomenon. I think time is actually a measurement of distance or all measurements of distances are in effect measurements of time under other names. Have you ever thought about where, along a continuum of time, the present gives way to the past? I mean in one nanosecond the present becomes the past. Nevertheless, what do we call time in the jump from past to present? Where does this happen—at the halfway point between present and past at some level of sub-time? Moreover, where in this continuum of past and present do we receive the confidence of the future?
When I was younger, I never thought about such things. I had all the time I could image. Now, that I am older, time claims a more critical place in my thinking. I am now aware that I am running out of time. That is, given male mortality rates, the distances measured in increments of days, months, and years between my birth and my present. is longer than the distance from my present to my end.
Some would say I am coming to grips with my mortality, having an existential moment, or whatever. I say that I am finally coming to the point in life where I have the luxury of savoring each moment, relishing each new day, each experience, each friend, each loved one because I am not distracted by the imperatives to fill my time up with production, success, or accomplishments as determined by others or by my own desires to have power in life. I have reached the point where timeless things like love, friendship, awe of the natural world, meaningful work give me a profound confidence and grateful sense of resignation in the goodness of life.
I think this is the place where the writer of Ecclesiastes came to and maybe why Jewish men were not allowed to study the book of Ecclesiastes until after they were thirty—a ripe age in biblical times. “What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they leave; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” (3:9-13)
To be a little cliché, slow down, enjoy your moments. The power to enjoy our lives lies in the confidence that God is Almighty and that our trust in God, no matter what, is well placed.
Prayer: God, please give us the ability to slow down and enjoy each moment you give us. Help us to make time in our lives to give to you every day. Amen.
Litton Logan
Minister
Sombra Del Monte
Christian Church
Albuquerque, NM
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