About Time

“Our God, Our Help in Ages Past” is Hymn #1 in the Pilgrim Hymnal, which was the hymnal of my childhood church, and of this church too until about 14 years ago. There is a verse we rarely sang (because it was the fifth verse, we usually only sang the first four), but when I read it as a child it chilled me to the bone:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day. (Isaac Watts)

Time is a cannibal? Time eats its own children? I could not imagine why this verse was in the hymnal. It perplexed me to no end.
Another hymn of my childhood was not in the Pilgrim Hymnal, but it was in the Genesis songbook that we used in youth group. It was also about time:

Come gather ‘round people wherever you roam
And admit that the waters around you have grown
And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone,
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone,
FOR THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’! (Bob Dylan)

Two songs, one written almost 300 years before the other, share a similar message about the nature of time. It is no respecter of dreams or desires. Time is not vindictive. There is nothing personal in the march of time. Time just is what it is, and will be what it will be. Time moves, rolls like an ever-flowing stream, rises like a flood.
The first conversation in the book, Changing the Conversation is called “It’s not about you.” We humans tend to take a lot of things personally, even things which are impersonal, things which neither we, nor anyone else, can control. When it’s warm and sunny during our summer vacation, we might attribute it to the grace of God or a benevolent spirit: “Somebody up there must like me.” If its cold and rainy, “What did I do to deserve this?” It’s just weather. It’s not about you, right?
The times have been “a-changin’,” and the church as we knew it has been, in a sense, “borne away.” Not just our church, all churches. It’s nothing personal. It’s nothing you or I or anyone else did wrong. It just is.
The Arts Committee has created this display (see it in the Fellowship Hall)to help us begin that first conversation (It’s not about you), and to bid farewell to “Christendom.” (It also inspired us to empty out a few junk drawers, which were stuffed with old photos!)
As you look at these faces and places, remember and give thanks for what is past. And, let it go. Hear the words of the prophet Isaiah:

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:18-19)

Or, if you must remember the former things, don’t worship them. You may consider what is past, but don’t let is keep you from participating in the present and celebrating the new life that God is creating. “Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”