God's Time

 Advent is about time.

It is about marking time before the world changes.

It is about marking time before we change.

It is about marking time for another magical event in our lives.

It is about marking time as we wait for justice, peace, love, and joy.

Marking time has become strange to me these days.

And not just me.

I have had multiple conversations this week with multiple people about time.

People are having trouble since COVID started remembering when things happen or don't happen.

I know that I am really struggling with this these days.

I just keep saying that everything was about 5 years ago.

One person was saying how they remembered being at our open house last year.

The problem is we didn't have one.

 

I know that we think of time as linear.

As we grow older, time moves on.

But the older I get the less linear time is.

My memories all collapse into one thing.

Can any of you remember one advent being different from another?

What about Christmas?

Maybe that is a good way to mark the time.

Certainly, I have certain memories about different Christmases.

They are laid out in some timeline.

The Christmas of my childhood.

The Christmas of being married.

The Christmas of living in New York.

The Christmas of living back in New Hampshire.

But the actual one all mesh together on that timeline.

What about you how are you experiencing time these days?

 

In the Bible, time is not necessarily linear.

We are told that God's time is not our time.

The events in the Bible don't always unfold on a linear path.

There are repetitions and things that go out of sequence.

And this morning we are told by Jesus that the ultimate end of time is not for us to know.

Perhaps because our own sense of time is not always reliable.

What we see in the world can only be viewed through our narrow understanding of time.

We live in certain times.

Those times all have their moments of war, famine, and pestilence.

They all have their moments of false prophets.

And we can only view what is our past and present.

We don't have a special view into what will be the future.

And for me, this is the most important thing about advent time.

Is that all we have is our past and present.

And even our past is complicated.

We don't remember everything and we don't always remember it in the right sequence.

All we have is moments in our mind's eye.

Moments that remind us of the love we shared with someone.

Moments that remind us of our failure and how we overcame it.

Moments of joy and sadness.

 

And this for me is the most important thing about Jesus teaching on the end of time.

It is really all about faith.

This is what time has to teach us.

This is what our memories of the past have to tell us.

That it is about faith.

It is about living in an uncertain world and still setting our sites on God's future.

It is living through all of the ups and downs.

It is living in a world filled with sin and still having hope for the good.

 

I saw on Facebook someone said, "I can't give thanks this year because of all the bad things happening in the world."

This I don't understand.

I understand that the world is a mess.

We see mass shootings piling up, the war in Ukraine, rampant inflation, people experiencing homelessness, political division, climate change, racism, homophobia, and a mental health crisis like never before.

There is no doubt the world is a mess.

However, when we give thanks it is because the world is a mess.

We give thanks to saying that in spite of all of it we still believe in the goodness of God.

We still believe in love, peace, and justice.

We still believe that God will see us through.

I can acknowledge the problems of the world, and see all the wonderful things in my life that God has given to me.

Giving thanks to me amplifies our need to help people living in different conditions.

 

Because as I look back on my life.

As I think about where I have come from.

I know this for sure.

None of it is possible without faith in God.

I won't go into specifics, but this has been an extremely difficult year for my family.

And the only way I have been able to survive and keep going is through faith.

And that faith is not my own.

It was handed down to me from my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.

I saw how they struggled but kept going by the grace of God.

I saw firsthand the power of faith in our lives.

 

Friday, was my wedding anniversary.

My wife and I were talking about the things we have faced in our 22 years of marriage.

A couple of things stood out from that talk.

One, we can't remember all the details.

Two, some days it seems like 22 years flew by, and other days it seems like it is two lifetimes.

(Time is a funny thing.)

Three, we were thankful for our faith which is the foundation of our marriage and our life as a family.

We both know that we would not have been able to get through everything without it.

 

I want to be careful about this next part.

I don't want to give the impression that what is most important in life is coming to church.

I do lament that kids are not being given that same foundation.

Because I think the world feels like it is coming undone.

It feels like things are always falling apart.

And the thing that we lean on in those times is our faith.

 

This week I was visiting with one of our members who just had surgery.

They were telling me that before that surgery the nurse told them that they seemed very calm.

They told the nurse that they were calm because no matter the outcome they knew God was with them and everything would turn out the way it should.

That is the kind of faith we need to face these days.

That is the kind of faith our children still need.

That is the kind of faith that our forebearers taught us.

They too lived through famine, wars, false prophets, political division, and pestilence.

They faced all those things with faith that God's time was coming, and that everything will turn out the way it should.

That God's time is not our time.

That we don't have to know the future just live with faith, hope, joy, and love.

 

For me, that is the time that marks our advent season.

It is not about linear time.

But about God's time when all will be well.

Where we give thanks not only for our blessings but the ways in which all God's children know God's love.

A time when our faith will be rewarded with all the goodness of God.

Until that time.

Let us live in this time.

Let's take the memories of the past and use them to make today the best it can be.

Let us have faith in God's ability to turn things around, and make us only live in God's time that is filled with faith, hope, joy, and love.

Amen