Easter Sunday morning - I'm driving to our school to lead a small morning service. Beth is in the front seat, putting on her makeup. We didn't have TIME to really get ready. We were rushing and focussed and we had gotten frustrated with each other. The gravel is loose, it's been so dry here for so many days. I'm listening to the Easter Weekend Pray As you Go and amidst discussing something with Beth I'm catching snippets of the calm voice, reflecting on the holiness of this day, this weekend: "Think about your weekends. It is a time of relaxing. The weekend is the time we waste the most TIME. We have more of it and we squander it..." Her voice drifts on out of the speakers and I look down to pause it because there isn't TIME to listen to it all then. As I look down, the car starts to swerve. I oversteer and over-brake. We go from one side of the road to the other, back to the other side, turn around backwards and flip over into the ditch. It was slow and it was so fast. There didn't seem to be TIME to react. We're hanging by our seat belts, upside down in the car. Making sure the other one is okay we figure out how to get out, grab our valuables and climb out the back door.
Here we are. We're fine. The windshield smashed, the top of the car crunched. But we are here. Spared, at least for now.
At the same moment, 7 hours away in Germany, a friend catches another friend as she faints and falls to the ground. There isn't any TIME to react. She's out of TIME before they start CPR and she's out of TIME when they stop 50 minutes later. She's not here, she's gone.
TIME. It is everything and it is nothing. It dictates our lives, how we treat others, where our priorities lie. It decides for us whether or not we can visit our grandmother or quickly thank someone or hand in that paper. It is an invisible force, precious and rare. It is the most valuable thing on earth and the only thing we can't make more of. And that is why it makes us selfish. We want all we can get out of it so why should we 'waste' our own TIME to make someone else's TIME more enjoyable, easier or more productive?
Jesus devoted his entire life, all of his TIME to his people. He taught, he prayed, he preached, he laughed, he noticed, he cared, he listened, he healed, he understood and he instructed. Every single thing he did, every event in his life on earth had someone else in mind. Every moment he was focussed on the Father, every second he was ensuring that someone find salvation in him. On this weekend, he chose to end his TIME, to give up his spirit, to fall into shadow and spend three days in the presence of darkness. He trusted that God would raise him after 72 hours, and that he would come back to earth to spend the rest of his TIME devoted to his people.
Easter Sunday morning - All sense of direction is lost, up becomes down, it takes forever and it happens so quickly. And as I'm rolling, the voice comes back to me, "TIME. How are YOU spending your TIME?" And as I hang in my seat belt, looking down at the roof of the car, I think, "I am spending it, completely on myself. I'm not giving it as I should. I'm not treating it like it isn't my own or like it is the biggest gift God has ever given me. I'm not treating it like the person I love most in this world sacrificed his life to ensure that I have it."
Two lives spared, one taken to rise again with Jesus. Each is a gift of time, one of life on earth, the other of eternal life above.
Life - each moment filled with endless opportunities to give what I have received.
And TIME should not dictate how I live but why I live. And the reason I live is because Christ gave me his own TIME, to live as if I were him - continuously giving back.
Thank you LORD, for life, for time and for your sacrifice.
Praising God that Mari Ellen's soul has found rest in Him.
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