Clocks

I have clocks all around the house. I have big clocks, medium clocks, and little clocks. I guess it’s safe to say that I´m pretty obsessed with time. It stresses me out a lot, mainly because I constantly worry about running out of it. Therefore, since I don´t like the thought of running out of time, I “multitask”. I don´t like rushing against the clock so I seek efficiency. But efficiency doesn’t always yield the expected results in my life. For instance, I don´t like feeling rushed, so I rush around to begin getting ready for a task-event-thing way ahead of time so I don´t have to rush to get it done, but then I run into the previous task-event-thing so everything collides together and I stress out because I´m running out of time and I feel rushed…

It´s exhausting…

My quiet time with the Lord has always suffered because of this time-conscious mentality. Therefore, the time I set aside for prayer is always surrounded by other things. I confess: I multitask my prayer time…yes…

Today´s devotional reading could not have been more spot-on for my circumstance. It said that I need to “wait patiently with Him while He blesses me.” What a wonderful thought! It continued, “don´t rush into My Presence with time-consciousness gnawing at your mind. I dwell in timelessness…Though you are a time-bound creature, seek to meet Me in timelessness…”

Now, here´s the trick: how do I do that?

As I am going through a period of waiting in my life when I am forced to realize that the things I’m waiting for are totally out of my hands, I wrestle against despair, anguish and anxiety. I look at the many clocks hanging all over my house and I hear the ticking away of time as if a bomb that is about to explode. I wish away days hoping for answers. I lose my temper because my hands are idle when I think they should be hard at work in trying to fix what is broken…thoughts rush through my mind as I try to figure out what to do when there is nothing I could do…except accept that it I’ve done all I can and now I just need to wait.

Then, a thought comes back to me…a familiar whisper that I’ve heard before but ignored: wait in the Lord. Use this time of waiting to go to Christ and remember that He is the Lord of all, even of time. Use this time to recall what He has said in His Word:

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1: 8

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 

2 Peter 3:8

“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:3

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet[a] no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3: 11

And that would be the blessing…intimacy with Christ while I wait.

I don’t want the clock to enslave me. I want to dwell in God’s timelessness and be renewed by the thoughts of eternity. I want to accept the fact that I do not own time and that the plan belongs to the Lord. I want to be able to say:

But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord,

I wait for God my Savior;

my God will hear me. Micah 7: 7

In His time…