TIME

How easily the joy of Christmas dissipates into the manufactured revelry surrounding the turning of the calendar to a New Year. For within a short seven days, we have moved from the celebration of the mystery of the miracle of the birth of the Son of God to the bittersweet embrace of the passing of time.

When it comes to time, are we not struggling to balance the hope of the new with the impossibility of retrieving experiences that have faded into the past? For while the novelty of something anticipated excites our hopes, remembrance of things past remind us, if ever so subtly, that life is transient. This is why the celebrations associated with the turning of the pages of the calendar seem forced, artificial and even sad. In response to the iron law of time, some continuously erect mighty artificial bulwarks with money to stay the impending stream of change, but just as time cannot be stopped, so these futile gestures inevitably come to nothing. While the lavish parties of the revelers are impressive for their momentary splendor, in the flash of a moment everything that was once perfect has now become a wrecked vestige of what was before. The band has played its last mournful note, the guests have departed, and the despoiled tables have lost their ordered elegance.

We may seem to have the power for a moment to stand athwart the stream of time, but whatever our strategy might be, it will always prove fruitless against forces that we can neither change nor reverse. If we stake everything on our own power to control time, we will inevitably feel the cold breath of mortality brushing silently by. For behind all the pomp and circumstance, we know in our hearts that “our days are like a fleeting shadow” (Psalm 144:4) that “vanish like smoke.” (Psalm 102:3) Thus wisdom dictates, “Though your riches increase, do not set your hearts on them.”(Psalm 62:10) And as the year opens to new promises both real and imagined, we might try to balance the eternal reality of the presence of God in our lives with the temporal considerations of the here and now. Perhaps the time is ripe to alter our relationship with both time and eternity and absorb the wisdom of Jesus’ compelling words: “Come, follow me.”(Matthew 4:19)