Time… The Master?

FRI., AUG. 5, 1988, 6:43 AM
FARM, STUDY

I gave you an assignment last month for the Ruminations that you are privileged to write this month. That assignment was the theme, which is time. I realize this can be a “tricky” one, in that I want you to raise some of the issues that My Teachings to you have presented but without being perceived as weird and too far-out. Yes, you still are to remain an orthodox Christian, even Presbyterian, as you compare the earth with other realms of existence. I realize this makes the assignment more difficult… but not beyond your capacities, I’m certain.

This title suggests the question, “Is time really the master?” In strictly earth terms it qualifies quite well. Each of you is born at some particular time and can expect only a certain number of years of life. Each of those years is divided into months, weeks, and days… on down to hours, minutes, and seconds, and fractions thereof. Within each year there are seasons, rougher but more obvious indicators of the passage of time.

In your culture there is supposed to be an exact time (day, hour, and minute) at which a person is born and, later, an exact time at which this person dies. This is the legal lifetime. Your human rights begin at birth and end at death, measured in time. One may drink a beer legally the day she is 21, but could be arrested for the same consumption the day before. In your world time determines a good deal of what you can do and cannot… even how much a product or a service costs. In this sense time can be quite a master.

By standards that were in force when you began your career you would have to retire from your full-time teaching in three more years. Now the standard has changed, and you will have a choice. Exact time is less of a master. Yet the passage of time is marked less exactly but more definitely upon your body and mind. Memory lapses are more evident to you, and your body cannot do some of what it once could. You shall continue to look older as the years accumulate. Time, disease, disability, and deterioration work together, sometimes to make the final years of an earth life less than beautiful and desirable.

You also know that spiritual life abounds outside of the earth, with time no significant reality. Yet you can imagine this only dimly. Does it mean no day and night? no season? no change in self since there is no passage of time? Are spirits all the “same age”? young? middle-aged? old, but without infirmities? Good questions… and I could answer them, but I shall let you wait until you know the answers more normally.

There is nothing you absolutely must do this morning. In a crude sense this puts you in a timeless word… for a short time. Even so, you will consult the clock and calculate how much time a particular task will take, for the evening has responsibilities tied more to exact times. You can live some of your life in a timeless fashion if you were more aware and appreciative of this opportunity. Can you overcome your cultural learnings and enjoy life outside of time?

As Jesus I have an age, more or less. Exactness put aside, you Christians claim this to be the 1,988th year since My birth, which would make it, probably, the 1955th year since My death on the cross. As God I have no age, nor as the Holy Spirit. Though God has been pictured, usually as old, I have rarely been given a human form. I am pure spirit, so time is not a factor with Me. Yet I do give you deadlines and other time-related tasks. I function in this time-centered world, but am not bound by it. I am the Master as well as the Servant, and time does not restrict Me.