Can’t find the time?

“YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN, FOR YOU WERE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE…” _{1 Corinthians 6:20}

   
    There comes a point in every person’s life when the future appears to them as if it were a vast open road, or to be more precise, a vast network of open roads, paths, streets, rivers and canals. Clutching a set of car keys in one hand, a credit card  in the other, and a holdall of clothing and essentials seated between his (or her) feet, our hypothetical person has the narcotic of independence in abundance.

    After a childhood of dependence, the stimulating rush of freedom can be capable of greatness or, indeed, not-so  greatness. When each of us reach adulthood, complete with fresh driving licenses, new (albeit second-hand) cars, house keys and (…what appears, at first, to be…) an endless supply of cash we have the freedom to live our lives how we want to.

   Actually, this independence can start years earlier than our 18th birthdays. Remember that first day when you took a biscuit out of the barrel at 5.45pm (15 minutes before dinner) without asking permission?! You were 12  or 13 years old: fully capable of judging your own stomachs ability to digest a biscuit and a whole meal shortly after. You had finally claimed nutritional independence!

   Its funny how highly our society marks “independence”. Broadly speaking, parental authority and even marital responsibility are regarded on an equal par to the dictatorial leadership of certain tyrants from Northern Africa or the Middle East.
  Of course I exaggerate slightly!

    That said, even Christians can be easily taken in by the supreme role of Independence/Democracy in our Western lives. It is strange when we consider how, as we get older and ‘more mature’, we start to label ‘time’ as ‘our time’ (you’ve all heard the phrase “he doesn’t have the time of day for me.”) and we degrade ‘responsibilities’ or even ‘chores’ to ‘something we used to waste time on’.


    Every year since 2004 I have gone on a Christian Camp, starting with 2 Summer Camps for younger folks, and culminating with 5 Easter Camps for the “more mature” teenagers/young adults. It was on the second of the Summer Camps that I first gave my life over to the Lord. Come 2012 I will finally have reached the ‘too-old’ bracket (albeit an extremely flexible bracket, open to interpretation!).

    Thinking back over 7 week-long camps, I find, curiously, that the greatest blessing I have gained (in the later years at least) was that which I have labelled as “loss of independence”.  You see, it is quite humbling to discover that (for one week) your time is no longer ‘your own’. Early morning breakfast duties, coupled with washing up sessions, cleaning rotas and military-precision bible study times rapidly force you to work on someone-else’s schedule. At home, school, or even to a certain extent in the workplace, you can choose who you spend time with. At a camp, however, teams are formed by leaders in charge. While not suggesting that there are people on the camps I have attended who I wouldn’t want to spend time with- which, quite honestly, is not true- it is still a ‘step down’ to be told who to associate with! 

   ‘Camp’ has been a dramatic reminder to me, especially in my adult years, that my time and preferences are subservient to a ‘higher authority’- ultimately the Lord God, but also- to a certain degree- to his representatives as well: leaders, parents, bosses, teachers etc.

   As normal, C.S. Lewis has something useful to say on the subject! In The Screwtape Letters, a senior devil is writing to a junior tempter and advising him how to tempt a Christian man:

“You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” Let him have the feeling that he starts  each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours…..The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.”

   It is easy to fall into the ‘independence trap’ of thinking that you have total control over 24 hours a day. In the Bible, James warns us about trusting our own plans for the future. He reminds us that we don’t even know “what tomorrow will bring”. James even goes so far as to describe humans as “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” When we view our lives with the Biblical perspective, we rapidly realise that we owe all of our time to the Lord God. We simply cannot make our daily decisions without seeking the wisdom and insight which God graciously gives us in the Bible.

    The most amazing incentive for us to live as if each minute belongs to the Lord is given to us in the example of Jesus Christ. Although he was fully God, he “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Do you remember how the night before his arrest Jesus prayed to his Father “not my will, but yours, be done.”  If the King and Author of Life became the sacrificial lamb for his people, should we not then be prepared to live each day for the God who has granted us each tick-tick-tick of the clock?

      “YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN, FOR YOU WERE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE…
… SO GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODY.”