Associate Minister's Musings
The Associate Minister’s Musings
The Associate Minister’s Musings
Time, it’s such a strange thing. It is supposed to move in a regular, logical progression, but we all know that it doesn’t. When you are having a lovely holiday, time passes so quickly until the inevitable return home, but when you are sitting waiting for the doctor or dentist, time has this ability to elongate as you get more and more stressed while telling yourself to calm down as it will be over soon. Society encourages us to think a lot about both the future and the past. We are told to carefully plan for the future, organise our finances and pension plans as well as remembering all the things that we need to do, today, tomorrow and next week. Then there is the past, as our photographs and memories allow us to recall events that have already occurred. For some people the past contains painful memories, the consequences of which still affect their lives, for others it is the unknown nature of the future that is frightening, and it all relates to this strange thing of time.
While both the past and the future are important and we should recognise their influence on our lives, there is another, perhaps more important element of time that we need to consider, the boundary between the past and the future which is the present. I’m sure there is an opportunity for a great philosophical debate as whether that boundary is actually time, but I’m not a philosopher, so I’m going to move on. At this present time you are reading these words ... and now they are in the past (but hopefully you have not forgotten them yet). The present (now) is God’s present (gift) to each of us and we get to choose how to use it. For some people the past dominates life so much that they never get to explore the possibilities of the present, for others it is planning and preparing for the future that fills their time. And while we need some time to do both of these, if it takes over life we lose God’s gift of the present.
For it is in this moment that God longs to meet with us, to walk alongside us as we teeter on the knife edge of the boundary between past and future. It is here that with his help we can face up to the consequences of things in the past and here that we can choose to trust him to be with us as we walk into the future, ready to face whatever is to come. So let us pause for a moment in the time that is ours, this present moment and rejoice in the presence of God here with each one of us in our time.
Julie Watson