Waiting, longing, and expectance are all themes that come up as we tell the Christmas story each year. Sermons talk about the centuries God promised a messiah and then the 400 years before Jesus’ birth that he was silent. We hear the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s grief over years of barrenness and their joy when the Lord gave them a son. The stories of Simeon and Anna are equally filled with tension between years of longing and joyous fruition. It wasn’t until old age that they saw God’s promises fulfilled. Theologians love to talk about living in the “already and not yet” of God’s redemptive plan. We know all God’s promises will come to pass, but we live in a time that not all have…yet. It’s a strange experience to be bound within time. Our human understanding of progress is limited by a sequence of time. There was a before, a now, and a later. Even Charles Dickens had this concept on his mind when he wrote the Christmas Carol to include ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. And yet, we’re told that God lives outside of time. If God is too good for time, then why aren’t we? Why are we stuck in this proverbial prison while He gets to look from a whole different vantage point? Why are we bound to time if we’re made in God’s image?
This question has frustrated me. Being stuck in time seems entirely unhelpful. I want to know the end of the story, not be stuck in the messy middle. I want to experience the fruition, not the weariness along the journey. Sometimes it’s tough to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you don’t know how long the tunnel will be.
This came to mind as I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. After reading the long books, I ranted to my classmates, saying, “Why is there so much traveling?” When you watch the movies, you get to the action scenes and fast-moving cinematography faster. The books leave a different effect. Page after page talks about the characters walking along boring roads without anything exciting happening. It’s infuriating. When I expressed this sentiment, my teacher thought about it and said, “Maybe Tolkein did that on purpose. After all, most of our lives are spent not yet at our destination. Most of life is a tedious journey.”
Our Relationship with Time
As creatures bound by time, much of our day-to-day reality is dictated by the limitations of how many hours we have in our day, how many days are in our month, and how many months are in our year. We can only do so much. And the urgency we feel as we determine which milestones we’d like to reach in different seasons of life is predominantly based on the aging process.
Most people have these milestones in mind:
- Elementary school
- Junior high
- High School
- College
- Career
- Marriage
- House
- Kids
- Build Assets
- Retire
We rush to achieve milestones by certain times, but disease or disruption could delay the plan at any point. We feel that our life is fleeting, and the finality of death haunts us. So, in a way, our relationship with time is often determined by our fear of death. As a result, we feel an urgency to get as much done within our lifespan as possible, and as we get older, those years slip away.
Fighting Against Time
Because we know time is fleeting, we often feel as if time is against us. We don’t want to waste time, lose time, or lose track of time. When we’re running late, we feel rushed and anxious.
At the same time, we hate waiting. We are impatient beings. We want our dreams to be fulfilled now. The messy tense process of waiting and longing and hoping is uncomfortable. Sometimes time won’t pass fast enough.
People say that time is the best medicine when a loved one dies or a breakup happens. Nothing dulls the pain other than the slow and steady passing of time, ushering you away from the event’s intensity.
The American View of Time
Our Western American culture is arguably one of the most time-bound societies in the world. Richard Lewis, a writer for The Business Insider, wrote,
“For an American, time is truly money. In a profit-oriented society, time is a precious, even scarce, commodity. It flows fast, like a mountain river in the spring, and if you want to benefit from its passing, you have to move fast with it. Americans are people of action; they cannot bear to be idle. The past is over, but the present you can seize, parcel and package and make it work for you in the immediate future…The Americans are not the only ones who sanctify timekeeping, for it is practically a religion in Switzerland and Germany, too. These countries, along with Britain, the Anglo-Saxon world in general, the Netherlands, Austria and Scandinavia, have a linear vision of time and action. They suspect, like the Americans, that time is passing (being wasted) without decisions being made or actions being performed.”
Lewis goes on in his article to explain how people from different regions of the world view time differently. Some view it as cyclical rather than linear. Others approach it with a value of balance and moderation rather than drive and action.
For us, time is something to be controlled and conquered. Americans are confident they can manipulate time to work for them as long as they create the correct schedules, routines, agendas, and forecasts.
The past is something to forget because it is not an actionable item on our calendar. But conversely, the present is something we feel an urgency to dominate, and the future is something we want to control.
The Anxiety of Time
Time makes us anxious. Because our society is so time-oriented, we internalize how we pass the time as a statement about our value. You know what I mean if you’ve ever been running late and felt like a horrible person because of it. Of course, it’s important to respect others’ time, but running late should not have an inherent morality. We view people who are laid back or less driven with their time as lazy. And we consider people who fill every moment with work and action as very successful.
This comes down to control. Ultimately, we cannot control time. We can not control the course our lives take, the roadblocks we run into, or how fast time passes. When we try to control something so beyond our control, it causes anxiety.
Why We Hate the Past, Present, and Future
We overthink the past and worry about what we should have done differently. We get nostalgic about old memories and wish we could relive them. We get sad when we can’t replicate past events or seasons of life.
In the present, we don’t always feel like we’re in control. Things happen that we didn’t expect. Sometimes reality feels boring, slow, and uneventful. Because it’s boring, we escape by living in the past or worrying about the future. To run from the mediocrity of the mundane, we either disassociate and daydream or self-sabotage and cause chaos.
The future is the most exciting aspect of time and also the scariest. It is entirely unknown, which is nerve-wracking, but it also holds the possibilities of what we could become. We cannot control the future at all. You cannot manipulate it because it’s beyond your control. That’s scary. We worry about every worst-case scenario and project our fears of what might happen to us. So the future feels risky and unsafe.
How Time Determines What We View as “Real”
What is real? We define reality by a set of internal values and beliefs. For example, if someone says something overly emotional when drunk, you might not consider that as “real” as what they said when sober. We think of the present as the most real experience. The past is less relevant, and since we change our opinions over time, we believe our current selves are the most accurate version. When we look to the past, we laugh at outdated fashion trends and even reframe ways we used to think back then because what’s happening now is more accurate. The future is hypothetical. Optimists believe the future holds many possibilities, but they’re all just hopes and dreams, so they’re not real. This is why we use phrases like “my dreams came true.” Something that was once a tentative hope became real.
This progression can only happen in a linear time framework. If you were outside of time, all things would be held as equally real because they would feel equally present. Things in the past or future feel less real because they are more distant from us on the timeline of our life.
We are also limited in our understanding. God is omniscient, which means He knows everything. He doesn’t have to “hope” about the future because He knows it. We, however, develop our understanding of the world progressively over time. This is how we learn. We have to learn addition before we learn multiplication in school. Our knowledge about the world around us is constantly evolving and changing. As we receive new information, we apply it to our current beliefs and adjust them if something no longer makes sense in light of the latest news.
What does God think?
Why would God make us so bound to time if He is outside of it? If we are made in His image, could we have been made outside of time too? It’s a strange question to think about and a reality that’s far beyond our understanding.
What does it even mean to dwell outside of time? How does that make God’s view of reality different than ours? I love to speculate about this stuff, but ultimately it’s a mystery. He didn’t spell it out for us. And even if He did, we might not have any way to understand something so outside of our own experience.
What we do know is that part of what it means to be human is being bound to time. When Jesus came to dwell with us in human form, he was bound to time. He was fully God and man, which is hard to comprehend when the Father was outside of time, and Jesus was within it. Christ submitted himself to human limitations.
Jesus Became Bound to Time
Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” This is one of my favorite verses about Jesus’ humanity. At first glance, it may seem like common sense. Of course He grew over time – that’s what happens to everybody (every human). However, this verse shows that by submitting himself to a fully human experience, Jesus also experienced what it meant to learn information progressively. He experienced what it was like for his body to grow and age over a span of time.
Jesus was sinless. So though he was experiencing life in a world affected by sin, his experience of being human can show us a lot about how our human limitations are not bad. Furthermore, I would argue many of those limitations existed before sin entered the world. So being limited is not a direct result of sin and suffering. It may cause discomfort when you try to supersede your limitations, but the limitation itself is not wrong.
Humanity’s Limitations Facilitate Dependence
Humans are bound to time because it requires us to depend on God. We don’t know everything at once, we can’t be everywhere at once, and we can’t escape the way that the passage of time significantly determines our world experience. Praying requires faith because we don’t know if or when it will be fulfilled. When we realize a gap in our understanding, we must ask God to show us and teach us.
The fact that we are limited is an act of God’s graciousness to us. We could not physically handle the weight of being everywhere, knowing everything, and experiencing time simultaneously. We were never meant to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders.
When we try to overcome these limitations, we put ourselves in an unhealthy mode of functioning. When we fill our lives with busyness to get as much done as humanly possible, we sacrifice our health and our mental well-being. Stress is widely known in the medical community as a leading cause of sickness and disease. We cause undeniable stress on our bodies and minds when we try to supersede our need to be present in one moment of time. We need to pay attention to the cues our body sends us to make us slow down, like hunger or exhaustion.
Matthew 6:34 says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Worry, stress, and anxiety are greatly minimized when we focus on one thing at a time. This was the template Jesus taught. We experience peace in presence.
In Revelation 1:4, John writes, “Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come.” By acknowledging Christ’s existence in all verb tenses, He’s affirming that Jesus is always present with us. He calls himself, “I am who I am.” The fullness of His being does not come or go based on how good or aware of Him we are. He is with us now, loves us, and wants to dwell with us in this very moment.
What Now?
If you find it hard to be present without your mind racing or getting up and doing something, that’s okay. Our culture doesn’t equip us to be bound to time without becoming more aware of our insufficiencies. We are not trained to just “be.” We believe we must perform a task or achieve a goal to be valuable. We don’t want to waste time, and it’s tough to rest and enjoy the silence without thinking of the to-do list.
Have you ever been lying on the beach on vacation and just relaxed because you didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything? That’s presence. And that’s the peace that Jesus wants to offer you even in your busy day-to-day life. He carries the weight of all time and tasks on His shoulders, so you don’t have to. You will feel peace when you surrender. It’s freeing to let go of the pressure to bend, save, manipulate, utilize, keep, track, or beat time. That is not the human way that Jesus modeled.
Like the Lord of the Rings story that frustrated me, Jesus’ ministry was filled with much traveling. They walked everywhere. This was partially due to the transportation methods of the day, but I also think it was intentional. Sometimes I wonder how much significant ministry happened as they journeyed together. Jesus had a way of stopping “on his way” somewhere to heal or teach. He often took time away to spend time with His Father, even amid crowds who needed Him. He was not worried that there would not be enough time. He trusted His Father to provide all He needed to do the work prepared for Him to do. He trusted His Father enough to stop for a snack, get a good night’s rest, and even have long conversations without rushing to his next destination.
We don’t always know what it would be like to be freed from the restraint of time, but Jesus showed us an example of living within its limitations. God is a God of order, and time is one way He chose to order His world. So don’t let that become an idol or a curse. Instead, let it draw you into dependence on the God who isn’t limited and yet is always present with you right now.
If you need a practical way to practice being present with Him, I published an Incarnation Meditation in the last blog post with a tangible tool you can use for that purpose. May it help you experience the peace and the freedom of being limited in God’s embrace.
