Marking Time with God

This morning as I sat down for quiet time with God, I began as I always do with my journal.  The first thing I do is write diagonally across the top of the page the day of the week and the date and then put a little squiggle line underneath it all before I start rambling to God, myself and what ever small critters might be inhabiting the porch at the time.  This morning after I wrote "Wednesday" I went to record the date and I wasn't sure what it was; however, I knew for certain that Sunday as the 25th, so I counted on my fingers, "Monday 26, Tuesday 27, Wednesday 28.....today is Wednesday, July 28th."  As soon as I had written it down and made my squiggle, I got to thinking about what I just did and realized that I do that alot.  I mark time from Sunday, almost always.  Granted I am a pastor and I know the date of Sunday, but I found it interesting that I was using the Lord's Day to mark time for me.  It was the stationary point of truth that I knew without a doubt and could figure the rest out from there.

It seems there might be a life lesson in that revelation somewhere.  Marking time with God.  We do it as a church with the church calendar.  It is never that we think January, February, March; rather we think in terms of Advent, Christmas, Ephiphany; Lent, Easter, Pentecost and then we end up with ordinary time.  We use those events in the life of Jesus to mark the events in the life of the Church.  While some write that off as the trappings of tradition that have no significance, there is something beautiful and calming about it.  Rather than the boundaries of our life being marked by minutes and hours, they become marked by God and what He has done and is doing.

Along those lines I sometimes think that Roman Catholics got it right with having seven sacraments.  Within their sacramental structure are the means by which we can mark the time of our life through God events.  Baptism, Communion, Confirmation become markers from birth to sixish to twelvish.  Marriage, Penance and Last Rites become the markers for adult life, with penance filling that large gap of space between marriage and death.  There is something beautiful about marking the time of your life by the last time you experienced the forgiveness of God, which is what penance is really about.  The question is asked When was the last time you experienced God's forgiveness?"  The answer comes back, "Last Tuesday, when I came from confession."  The spiritual becomes the boundary markers of our life rather than the practical. 

How would our lives be different if we used significant God events to mark our lives?  What if in addition to celebrating birthdays, we celebrated the anniversaries of Baptism?  What if instead of celebrating wedding anniversaries at a fancy restuarant we celebrated them at church as we look what God has done inside that marriage over the last however many years?  What if instead of remembering that Sunday was the 25th so Wednesday must be the 28th, we remembered experiencing the presence of God in a life transforming way on July 12th and it has been two weeks and two days since then so today must be the 28th?  Time, as in seconds, minutes, hours and days, is always going to be the practical boundaries of our lives, but what if instead of marking life by the practical we choose instead to keep God as the center of our life and use spiritual markers as the boundaries and markers?  How would that change how we think about God's interaction in our lives?

Grace and Peace be with you all,
Faron