As I begin to write, I’m about ten minutes away from hearing a beautiful sound. In ten minutes, our chiming wall clock will ring out a quarter past the hour. You won’t notice, but I’m listening, and I’ll be pausing for a moment.
You see, our clock has been away, taking time for a bit of a sabbatical for its health. For decades, it has been hanging on our living room wall and, as long as I remember to wind it, it has quite precisely and faithfully fulfilled its sweetly-toned chronological duty.
Ah, but clocks, and clock owners, are ironically prey to the onslaught of time itself. Our clock recently began to chime out (or not) a few warning signs that it needed some cleaning and fine-tuning. So, we took it down and entrusted it to the daughter and son of the skilled clockmaker from whom we’d bought it long ago. (What a fine and vanishing craft it is to be able to build and/or repair such an instrument.)
While it was away, I missed that clock terribly. Perhaps I’d not realized how often each day I’d gazed at our well-trusted timepiece. I’d not realized how accustomed my ears were to hearing the “quarters” rung out in the familiar Westminster fashion or how often, even in the night, I’d counted as it chimed the hours. I’d rather count from my pillow than roll over to gaze at the alarm clock which will soon—too soon, whatever the time is—be shrieking through my head. I much prefer the gentle chimes.
So, for a time, all I could count were the number of times each day my eyes focused on a sadly blank wall. My ears were so hungry for clock music that they tricked me into hearing some “phantom chimes” once or twice. But the clock is now back in its place, and I smile to report that some order has been restored to our place.
Time itself is one of the deep mysteries of our existence. We live in it. [Wait! Here come the chimes.] But we never really feel at home with it. It seems to move too quickly or too slowly and always inexorably. I remember C.S. Lewis’ assertion that humanity’s discomfort with time is a clue that our Creator had something far better in mind than for us to be time-bound, time-chained.
I wonder, and I marvel, that the eternal God of the universe, so far above and beyond time itself, is so divinely “aware” of the “right” times. The Apostle Paul writes, for example, that God sent his Son into this world “when the time had fully come” (Galatians 4:4).
As I write, we’re just days away (hear the clock tick) from another Holy Week which will begin with Christ’s “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus gives hints that he is completely aware of “the time.” He knows when it’s time for him to “be about his Father’s business.” Later, he’ll perform incredible miracles, but almost as surprising to us as the miracles themselves are the times when he warns (I’m paraphrasing), “Don’t be loud about what I’ve done.” The Son, it seems, was deeply aware of the Father’s “timetable” for the culmination of that ministry. It must not be rushed.
But then perhaps you could say again that it was precisely “when the time had fully come” that the Lord enters Jerusalem as a triumphant king in a way that no one could possibly miss. And he says that, if the cheering crowd was silent, even “the stones would cry out.”
It seems clear that the disciples were deeply confused about what was coming and the kind of King he would be. But it seems just as clear, though profoundly mysterious, that the Lord of the universe was divinely aware of “the time.”
Text Copyright 2024 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.