MaryBeth LaMont

Do you by any chance have a microwave, range, coffee maker, and, perhaps another appliance or two all with slightly different times on their timer/clock? Maybe one is screaming for attention right now by constantly flashing 12:00. With all those digital clocks, do you still have yet another analog clock hanging somewhere in the kitchen?

This is one of the 21st Centuries greatest dilemmas: how to program each of our digital clocks to have the exact same time displayed. Well, maybe not one of the greatest dilemmas, but a sore spot in modern kitchen living and family ritual. “But Mom, I wasn’t late according to one of our clocks…!”

These devices have clocks not so much to keep us informed as to the local and current time, but because they have timing devices and need to be set for cooking, brewing, and defrosting. That way our roast, our coffee, and our frozen items are never, or at least rarely, not done properly. Yet with so many clocks somehow we still seem to struggle to make it somewhere on time.

Time is important to us. Some of us have to punch time cards for work. Others have to make note of the hours spent working. Many have jobs where no one checks the time unless work is ill-prepared or the worker not always available. Then we hear what is expected of us in terms of the time we put in.

I served one church who insisted on us keeping a log of our time working. Did that include my reading at home? What about commute time to hospitals and nursing homes? Did it include often long conversations when we bumped into a member in Target on a day off or a restaurant at night?

After a while we staff got together, shared our frustrations, and asked if there was some important work not being done. When assured that was not the case, we pushed, and succeeded to have this log disappear.

What is it about time? Time just plods on, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour. Time is indifferent to us or our schedules. It just does its duty and goes on.

We worship a God of all time. God, in fact it is said, existed before there was time. I don’t picture all the clocks around God being perfectly timed. Instead I think there are no clocks around God. God works continuously at God’s decision to love God’s creation. It is also not that God is indifferent about time. God cares when someone is in peril and would like to see that peril end quickly, that is, in little time.

The Greek word in the Bible for God’s time is Kairos. It is understood as God’s timing. Those of us with faith in God need to put trust in God’s timing. While God’s timing may seem to be like all those kitchen clocks off kilter, God’s timing belongs to God and we can trust god knows what needs to be done when.

In the meantime we can try all we want to synchronize our clocks (Good luck with that!) but we can also try to order our lives into God’s timing. When does God want the war in Ukraine to end? I have no doubt it is now. When does God want hunger and poverty to cease? Again the answer is the same. With these and so many pressing issues in life we need to ask ourselves and each other: “If not now, when?” The answer to that question makes all our clocks irrelevant and our marching orders clear.
It is not our clocks that need synchronizing, it is our following and service.