What are some metaphors used to describe time?
1.
Carousel:
History is a never ending cycle doesn't sit well with our experience.
2.
Arrow:
Time is like an arrow propelled forward, it has direction and is going
somewhere. This model turns history into deterministic force. We are constantly
making adjustments to the number of possibilities before us. They call to us
and we make the adjustments to take into the future.
3.
Journey: Time
history or life is a journey en route to a land that God has called us to. We turn
our backs to something and move on to something else. This sense of time,
marching on and hurrying along, becomes more acute as we grow older. History is
not a succession of meaningless episodes. God is the Lord of time and history is
the arena in which God moves. Time is the platform on which God acts. What is
God doing?
· PAST: How should we respond to the past? We are to discern the sovereign hand
of God in our lives. We are where we are today because of the grace of God. God
has been very good and has given much. Dine so much. All those seeming solo
encounters. He had orchestrated all the events in your lives to make you the person
that you are. While there are also days of disappointment and failure, when we
put the good and bad together, overwhelmingly the good overrides the bad. Joy
is quenched when we focus on
a.
the
one thing that went wrong and forget the many things that went right.
b.
what
we do not have and forget what we already have.
The ability to jump out of bed and see what's around you is
not accidental but a gift from God. But one failure can loom so large as to blanket
out all of God's blessings. We have life and breath and every step we take is
taken in mercy, in the atmosphere of grace. The past cannot be changed but can
only be transformed/transfigured. There is no reverse gear in time. History is
irreversible. Words hastily spoken cannot be retrieved. The Apostle Peter could
not go back in time and choose not to betray Jesus. Judas was painfully conscious that there was
nothing he could do to change the past. But unlike Peter, Judas could not deal
with this failing past and he allowed it to overwhelm him and choke the life
out of him. Pioneers of the future are prisoners of the past who allow their
pasts to be transformed to become a platform of the future. Gospel is about
turning mistakes into the possibilities of the future, forgiveness, relief from
the mistakes of the past.
Reflection Questions:
Which memories need to be brought to the Lord for transformation and healing?
· FUTURE: Brace ourselves for the future
time platform on
which God acts, how then shall we live? Cultivate a spirit of curiosity like children
constantly asking questions. What are you teaching me? What is God telling us? Some
of us stay perpetually in a state of apathy born out of failure or apathy born
of achievement. “I've been there and done that. Now we’ll just cruise along.”
Apathy that comes out of learning from the past, being open to all the exciting
possibilities that God has in store for us.
Law of entropy: Just as marriages will not cruise along if
left to their own devices will also die over time, it is the same with the Spiritual
life. We need to take active step to nourish it. Unless new energy is pumped
in, it will wilt. Just like the way we look after our physical health, paying
loads of money to check our cholesterol level etc., have we done a spiritual check-up?
Have we grown too big for God? Cultivate a holy curiosity about God. Commit
yourself to the exciting possibilities that God has in store for us.
Reflection Questions:
a.
What
is this new thing that I am learning? What do I need to pay attention to what
God has done and is doing? What is he asking me to do to partner him in the
work that he has in mind.
b.
What
must I do to relinquish control over my life? We cannot change the past but God
is not done with us yet. Use that as a launching pad to the things God wants to
do. Plan no surprises. Ask God to surprise us, relinquish control.
c.
Are
you prepared to say, “Whatever it is, I believe you have my best interest at heart
and I will trust you.”? Is this a risky step? Trust God in the present.
· PRESENT: About the God who follows us in the present. Trust God in the unexplored future.
As the pilgrims go up to Mt Zion singing this psalm, they were singing in the
abstract. Along that journey, the Psalm gives us assurance. From a distance,
pilgrims could see the end but in between, there are still some hazardous parts
to conquer. They may be accosted by bandits, suffer exposure to the sun. . a
long way more to go, Psalmist reminds us of God's presence. Journey is still
ahead, still have dangers. Exposure to the burning suns, post guard for
protection, our diviner body guard. Divine protector. Hills: places where pagan
deities thrive.... Looking to alternate gods. Financial markets etc. our help
do not come from other sources but from Yahweh Covenantal God. What is he like?
· Close at hand, He will not let your
foot slip. He promised to be there in an instance. Quick as lightning, catching
us when we fall. It is so easy to take a wrong step so this is very comforting.
· Our God will not ever sleep. We can
rest in peace and go to bed without worries because the Divine Sentry is
watching over us. He doesn't go off duty as long as we are on the journey.
Human sentries will sleep, but God will not.
The early American Indians had a unique practice of training young braves. On
the night of a boy’s thirteenth birthday, after learning hunting, scouting, and
fishing skills, he was put to one final test. He was placed in a dense forest
to spend the entire night alone. Until then, he had never been away from the
security of the family and the tribe. But on this night, he was blindfolded and
taken several miles away. When he took off the blindfold, he was in the middle
of a thick woods and he was terrified! Every time a twig snapped, he visualized
a wild animal ready to pounce. After what seemed like an eternity, dawn broke
and the first rays of sunlight entered the interior of the forest. Looking
around, the boy saw flowers, trees, and the outline of the path. Then, to his
utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man standing just a few feet
away, armed with a bow and arrow. It was his father. He had been there all
night long. (Our Daily Bread, October
1995) In the same way God protects us from the heat of pressure. He
protects us from danger on the outside: conniving colleagues in our office,
crazy people who detonates bombs... Yet He protects us from the inside too. Not
just physical internal viruses that destroy the body but those insidious
desires, wickedness, from ourselves not just from others. He protects us from that
which destroys the way we think, generating unholy thoughts, from insinuations
from the devils, from evil tendencies that fester in our spirit from time to time.
Just as the pilgrims were invited to
worship the pagan gods that they met on the journey, we will also experience
the invitation to worship other gods: to trust our educational abilities.
Should we heed these calls?
This psalm is for people on a journey.
It is not something abstract. All of us are on the journey: some into a new
job, becoming a father or mother... for others, it is a journey to a scary place,
to unemployment, a new opening, new relationships, journey into the unknown,
the cancer ward, a failure in examination.
Reflection Question:
a.
Where
are you on the journey? Are you poised for an unknown situation? What keeps you
from trusting in the Lord?
b.
What
are some of the competing voices calling out to us to put our trust in them?
Life is not a colorful carousel... it is not a cycle of fatalistic journeys coming
out of the past and rolling into the future. We need a holy curiosity to
further the agenda of God. Can I trust and look out for the lessons to be
learnt? Can I look forward to the new and exciting things that God has in store
for me? Can I trust that He will continue to do great things for us, mindful
that God has a great future for us?
Trust in this God who watches over
us, Be faithful to One who is faithful. He is at work in our life. What will our
God do with you, for you to you?
I recommend this lovely song by Cliff Richard The Faithful One
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