"'All Be Safely Gathered In': Gathering of Time"

Text: Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Theme: “’All Be Safely Gathered In’: Gathering of Time”
The Thirty Second Sunday In Ordinary Time
The Twenty Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
November 7, 2010
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
The Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

+In the Name of Jesus+

A little over a year ago, it was discovered that I have close to a thirty five percent hearing loss in my right ear. Since the diagnosis, I have used a Beltone hearing aid. When the hearing aid is out of my ear, I can still hear sounds like I would through an AM radio station. When the device is in my ear, the sound is more like FM radio – or in stereo. It is a subtle but noticeable difference. The unit runs on a watch battery, and it lasts for about two weeks. When the battery runs out of juice, there’s this little beeping sound in my ear which is the signal to have it replaced. My audiologist suggested that I purchase a pack of fifty batteries – about a sixth month supply. I’m good to go until at least next spring.

I don’t wear my hearing aid to bed, but yesterday, shortly after five o’clock in the morning, I heard our dogs starting to make doggie noises. They weren’t quite barking, but it was getting close. Usually, it means that they want to go into the backyard and conduct the sort of business that dogs conduct outside. I get up, let them out, send them into the backyard, stand around a bit, bring them back in, return them to the cage, and then head back to bed. That usually does the trick, but not yesterday.

Safely nestled under the covers, I doze off only to hear the dogs sounding off again. They stopped for a bit. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, I hear a little beeping sound – and the dogs responded in kind. The sound came from the smoke detector, and the smoke detector, actually, was only being polite. It was trying to tell me that its battery was running low. Time was running out on the ability of the device to perform its function!

Unfortunately, we did not have a sixth month supply of 9-volt batteries on hand. The builders of our home never suggested that. Thus, the choice was clear: either go back to bed to the sound of continued beepings and barkings, or go to the store and get some 9-volts. In the end, I spent time – albeit unexpectedly – purchasing batteries.

This morning’s topic is time. When we think or talk about time, the conversation usually comes around to how well, how poorly, or even how unexpectedly we spend it. Time is like money in that it is spent. We even talk of investing our time for the good of the cause – whatever that cause may be. Bookstores and libraries have countless volumes written by authors who spent time writing book son how better to spend time. Steven Covey, for instance, wrote The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First. These books, both of them national bestsellers, taught us much about how best to spend time in pursuit of our personal goals.

It is amazing to consider how we understand, manage, mismanage, use, and describe time. For starters, think of the phrase “Spring forward and fall back.” Last night, we set the clock back one hour in time. We measure time, on a very personal level, whenever we have a birthday. Consider some simple math. This coming Tuesday, I will mark the fact that I have lived twenty six million two hundred eighty thousand minutes, which equals four hundred thirty eight thousand hours, which equals eighteen thousand two hundred fifty days, which equals two thousand six hundred seven weeks, which equals, roughly, fifty years. If the rough average is correct, I’ve spent fifteen of these fifty years sound asleep. I wonder: am I spending time, or is time spending me?
What about all these figures of speech that relate to time? There are phrases galore! Consider this one: “I’ll get around to it when I get some free time.” Free time, huh? But wait! What about the person who says “Time is money”? How about this one: “I charge $350 per hour plus expenses.” That doesn’t sound like free time!

Occasionally, you hear folks remark that they “lost track of time.” I’ll give you an example. There’s this piano piece called “Linus and Lucy” which was written by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi who put together all that wonderful Charlie Brown music. I saw the sheet music for it and thought: “I can play this.” I bought the sheet music, and I sit down to practice it. As it turns out, it was harder than it looked. The rhythm in the left-hand part is different than the right. I kept working at it and working at it. I was picking it up in bits and pieces and then larger chunks. I was getting close to getting it right. Finally, my brain started making the connections with my hands, and I nailed it. I was pretty excited. But when I looked at my watch, it seemed like I was coming out of a trance. I had sat at the piano for over three hours! I had no intention of sitting there that long; I totally lost track of time!

People go on vacation, and what happens? Time flies! People stand in line at the Post office at four o’clock in the afternoon on Friday and time seems like an eternity; time stands still. Time, I’m here to say, has been murdered a million times over. People talk about “killing” time. Other folks say that don’t “have enough time”, but don’t we all have the same amount? On the football field, teams take a “time out”. That stops the clock, but not the clock of life; that keeps ticking.

This little bit of wisdom was scotch-taped to the kitchen cabinet in my boyhood home:

The clock of life is wound but once
And no one has the power
To tell just when then hands will stop
At late or early hour.

Underneath that cryptic sentence there was this phrase: “39 people died while you read this short poem. Sooner or later, it will be you. Are you ready?” Does the time you have remaining on this earth, even though you don’t know the amount or length, have anything to say about how you will spend it?

As Christian believers, it is worth spending time learning and even re-learning what God has to say about time. In the creation account in Genesis, we hear of morning and evening and of one day. After the story of Noah and the ark, God made a promise that had to do with time. We read in Genesis 8:22: “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Time, Biblically understood, has a rhythm to it: the rhythm of the seasons. In a best-loved section of the Bible, the writer of Ecclesiastes says:

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 break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw 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 throw 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.

The tendency – if not, the temptation! – that we all face is to worry and to fuss and to fret over time. Because we do that, we often seek to compartmentalize, or manage, or manipulate time – and usually to suit our own purposes. We have calendars and computers and synchronized mobile devices that we employ to remind us how we have to spend our time and want to spend our time.

We speak of it as “our time” as if we have complete ownership of every tenth of a second. When we pack too much activity into any period of time, we talk about needing what some folks have called “me time.” It’s so easy, though, with the talk about time and the spending thereof, to quite forget a phrase both startling and wonderful: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

If the Lord has made it, then it can only come to us as a gift. If it comes in the way of a gift, it comes in the way of the Gospel.

Come to think of it, not much happens – in fact, nothing happens – without the gift of time. Nothing happens in our lives without a time for it. The message that the prophet Haggai received in our sermon text was delivered long ago. But even then, it had a specific time. Listen:

On the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, the second year of King Darius, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day of the month, the word of the LORD came by the prophet Haggai.

God, who is beyond time and space, God, who is eternal and who has no beginning and end, does not disregard His good gift of time. If you’re looking to find God beyond the limits of time and space, if you think that the Lord exists in vague generalities and abstractions, if you think that God was or is only the creation of the human mind to help answer existential questions, then the Bible will shock the daylights out of you. It proclaims the truth that “When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son – born of a woman and born under the law – to redeem those under the law.”

The gift of time! You can compartmentalize it, dissect it, schedule it, spend it, waste it, kill it, watch it pass you by. Our God would have us gather it in and celebrate it for all the gift that it is. The best time is 11:00 AM on Sunday mornings, the time set aside to hear God’s Word and respond to it together. Whether you prefer a spring forward or a fall back, our time is in God’s hands. Take comfort and draw strength from that always. Amen.