It is about time!
Well it’s about time!
How many times have you heard that sentiment in your? From a parent that has been waiting for you to finally listen to their advice? From a teacher that has been waiting for you to understand the lesson? From a friend that has been giving advice and waiting for you to follow their guidance? From yourself as you have finally figure out the life lesson you have been working on for months or years?
It’s really one of those sayings for me that carries mixed emotions; it is generally shared as a “dis”, carrying a sense of shame for having not figured out the truth sooner. However on occasion, and given the right tonality and inflection, this statement can be shared with a sense of strength and encouragement for the work, effort and energy that was expended getting to the place of understanding.
We are actually going to take a peek at another meaning of the phrase today as we pick up where we left off on My Year Without God. In my last post, I covered the difference between being religious and being spiritual; breaking down the reality that all things in are spiritual, in that they are all connected and it is the spirit that gives all things meaning and value and that the spiritual life is the life that continues to look for that meaning and value in all things.
During my year without god, I discovered another truth about God that had alluded me for years…in fact it was so counter to what I knew of God that it was hard for me to accept at first. I don’t know what you think of when you think of God but if I were to sum up my prior understanding of God in one word it would be JUDGEMENT.
I have alway envisioned God as the one that holds the biggest stick and with it I was either blessed or cursed…based upon God’s judgement of my performance to date. If my good deeds or intentions outweighed the bad deeds and intentions in life, God would use the stick to bless and allow me to prosper. If however the deeds and intentions of life leaned on the negative side then God would curse me in that moment. The sinister part of the checks and balances is that God made the rules and set the bar so high that I was barely able to reach it…so I was confident that my life would be a life filled with God’s judgement weighing heavily against me.
On the flip side, I also understood that God was a God of love, so I would be cut a little slack but I was convinced that even though I was forgiven, God was looking on me with a sense of shame at my inability to measure up and perform to the level that was expected.
I then dug into the concept of The Sabbath by reading a book entitled The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel. I had never read anything about God from the Jewish perspective and had to say that I was drawn in on in a few short pages! Heschel defines Judaism as “a religion centrally concerned with holiness in time”, a concept that he makes clear by discussing the difference between space and time; space would be anything that we construct or manipulate with our hands (those are the very attributes of God where we have been made in His image - the ability to create and reign over the physical aspects of life) whereas time is that place the truly separates us from God. We exist in time, time exists within God and according to Heschel “we must conquer space in order to sanctify time” and in so doing we truly experience God.
To help summarize the book, here is a paragraph from the first chapter of The Sabbath (this doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface, I encourage you to read this book):
“To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”
In other words, life isn’t simply meant to be about doing but being. As the doing in life takes place in space, the being in life takes place in time and because time exists within God it is in those moments of time that we are truly interacting with God.
That which truly sets God apart from creation is time. For God to occupy space defines God in the place of “thingness”, in order to meet the thingness of God we must enter into space and we quickly find that no space is vast enough to contain God and in fact we discover that all spaces fail BUT it is when we see God in the moments of time that we are able to truly tap into eternity.
If you think back to the differences between form and space that I raised in a previous post (spirit gives life to the form and form gives shape to universal truths, the spirit that is behind the form) it becomes clear to me that interacting with God in space is form (the form of religion) and even the religious practices of our day are shrines that take space and form and can keep us from God if we stop seeking the spirit behind the practice. In order to connect to the spirit behind the form, we must step beyond what we do in the space and connect with God by being with God in the moments of time; this isn’t to say that the we are enslaved by the form of a clock but experiencing a moment in time that has no beginning or end where we tap into eternity.
As I pondered this distinction I realized that seeing God in space (form) influenced my worship to be filled with fear and trepidation. I didn’t see my times of worship as something to rejoice over, it was obligatory in nature only. Seeing God in time (spirit) opened my eyes to an event that transcends space and makes worship more worthwhile and enjoyable! I came to understand that God set apart the Sabbath as a day, a dedicated moment in time, to simply be. I am to toil and work 6 days a week and it is within those 6 days that I am master this world in all that I do but, as a beautiful expression of love, God set apart the Sabbath for me to simply be.
And then it hit me…and it was about time!
The dissonance that I have been feeling about God finally started to come together for me as I began to see that my mind was too weak to comprehend God’s sovereignty and that my spirit was too divided; and the truth is that this is something true of us all.
What I feel when I think about the love of God is divided; I believe that God has love for me (to an extent) but it begins to unravel for me when I stack my unworthiness against God’s worthiness (those moments when I stack my form against God’s form and fall short at every turn). When these moments of comparison occur in space and form, my unworthiness turns to guilt and that guilt turns to shame and my weaker mind and heart take over and I push God away. God provides the Sabbath for me to create room in my mind and heart for the spirit of God to remind me that this moment is why I was created.
As Heschel reminds us “One must be overawed by the marvel of time to be ready to perceive the presence of eternity in a single moment. One must live and act as if the fate of all of time would depend on a single moment.”
So what does all of this mean as it relates to our understanding of God, it’s simple…IT’S ABOUT TIME!
It’s up to me to take moments of time to experience life. It’s up to me to make the most of every moment that I have been given. It’s up to me to set aside time (whether that is one day a week, pockets of time throughout my week OR stay aware of the moments that unfold in my life) to experience God in spirit as I stope striving and simply be.
It’s about time and it’s up to me.
It’s about time and it’s up to you…what will you do who will you be with the moments of time that you have today?
