“TIME TRAVELLING WITH GOD”
Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Catford, Heathmont Uniting Church
Sunday 30th December 2012 – Christmas 1 and New Year
Scripture – Ecclesiastes 3 : 1 – 8, Psalm 139, Matthew 6 : 25 – 34
A research team at the University of South Australia has been looking into human
well being and life satisfaction in Australia. They have just published their results in a
book called Time Bomb, by the team leader Barbara Pocock. They say that most
Australians are concerned that there is not enough time for everything they want to
include in a happy contented life. So the biggest block to life satisfaction today for
most of us is time itself - our work/leisure balance, how we balance all the demands
on our time, the pressure from new technologies, and deciding priorities and finding
time for personal quiet and reflection to help us cope.
We here this morning know something about this from our personal experience.
Time is one of the great mysteries and drivers of our daily life. As children we all
heard: It’s time to get up, get washed, have breakfast, go to school, do our
homework, tidy our room, go to bed. As we grow older we hear new voices saying:
It’s time for work, for study, to feed the baby, to run the kids about, to do the
garden, to visit relatives, to move out of home into care. Time seems to control our
lives and living, and often leaves us feeling powerless, robbed of meaning, jaded and
worn out.
It helps to remember that time is not so real and all powerful as it seems. Time is a
product of our human thought, action, organising. Human beings make clocks,
calendars, diaries, alarms, mobile phones and notebooks, not God. We use time to
order and organise life. But God is not bound by time as we are, because God is
eternal and timeless. God is the beginning and end of all things, Alpha and Omega at
once. The Bible says that one day and a thousand years are the same to God. And
this eternal and ever present God gives us time as a gift, in which we can come to
know and relate to him in loving trust.
1. The Psalmist says that God besieges or surrounds us in time.
Psalm 139 gives us a wonderful picture of God as universal, present everywhere,
knowing and caring for us personally, and inescapable in life, no matter where we
are or what we are experiencing. He says: You hem me in God, behind and before,
and you lay your hand on me. The word to hem in is a military word describing an
army surrounding and besieging a town to capture it. That is what God does to us in
our life in time. Silently and constantly he surrounds us so that we may realise and
respond to his presence, power and love in our lives. Little by little God calls us to
surrender to his love, reality and relevance in our search for meaning and purpose.
Slowly but surely God invites us to enter into relationship with himself as our
creator, lover, saviour and hope.
So we are not surrounded by cold impersonal time, or a mysterious uncaring
universe, but by the unseen presence of the creative, powerful, loving presence of
the eternal Spirit of God. God is there in time and life seeking to find us as we seek
to find him. St Augustine said: You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are
restless until they find rest in you. And St Paul says: God is not far from any of us,
for we all live and move and have our being in him, since he has created us to seek
after God and to find him. In that kinship with God is our human greatness, purpose
and destiny. Our destiny is to become children of God, creative, responsible, loved
and loving.
At airport terminals we often see emotional reunions between tense, anxious
waiting relatives or friends, and arriving loved ones from overseas. The restored
relationship can light up the crowded terminal of people with deep emotion and
tears of joy, laughter, hugs and kisses. Our human relationships matter so much,
because spiritually we are here in the terminal of life to discover and enjoy a
fundamental life relationship with God. We find ultimate security and satisfaction in
life when we know that God loves us, accept that love, and begin to live in
relationship with God like a loving Father or Friend. Faith is the key to our true
selves, and a life of lasting purpose and meaning.
2. God surrounds us behind in the past, and ahead in the future.
The psalmist says: God, you hem me in behind and before. God does surely meet us
in the past and its lessons for life. He meets us in the unfolding process of creation
and human history, in the moral struggle between good and evil in persons and
nations, and its opportunities for thinking responsible human beings to live by love
and goodness. And God often meets and influences us in our personal past, in
powerful memories and relationships with people that inspire or challenge us to live
for humanity, love, compassion, justice and peace ourselves.
And what of the future? How confidently we all assume we have one as we
celebrate a New Year! Yet big changes in our world – political, international,
environmental, financial – could snatch that future away from us. And big changes in
our own life – in family and relationships, in work and security, in ageing or health
and illness – could destroy that future we so often take for granted. Psalm 103
reminds us that every human life is in reality like grass that withers and dies when
the hot desert wind blows over it. Only those who honour and trust the Lord have
an ultimate security in life, because they know a love and goodness that outlasts all
else.
Cecil Rhodes planned great things for himself and South Africa but died aged 49
saying: So little done, so much still to do. That is life. Each day little children die
prematurely, young people are killed in accidents, adult lives are cut short in wars
and disasters, and healthy adults succumb to disease and death. None of us have a
certain full credit card in life. When we really think about the future, God meets us
there as well. It is always his, not ours. We depend totally on God to give and
sustain our life and future. As we face 2013 we need to trust not ourselves and our
plans, but God and his purpose of love to see us through whatever the future brings
us. The same faithful and loving God will be there for us in the future as in the past,
whatever our circumstances. God gives his people hope for the future, for living in
this real and contradictory world, and for life with him in the world to come. In the
past and the future God surrounds us.
3. The Psalmist rejoices that God touches our lives here and now.
You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand on me, he says. Here is
the climax to his lessons of life and time. God touches our lives with his hand from
time to time in our life and experience. This means God becomes real, makes
contact, sustains us with signs of his love and grace in both joy and need. God does
not show us all of himself, but gives us his hand, enough of his presence, forgiveness,
love, goodness and peace through his Spirit for us to live by. The unseen eternal God
of past and future becomes real to us when he reaches out to be with us in the joys
and struggles that life involves.
Someone has written that Christ is the hand of God let down to hold and help us in
our present life. God’s hand is most visible and human in the coming of Christ to us,
which we have just celebrated at Christmas. He is Emmanuel – God with Us, as one
of us, to save and uphold us in life. In him we can see the love of the Father for the
world and us, and through his Spirit we can experience the strength and help of the
Father to bring hope and good out of tough times.
I remember one Christmas visiting a depressed and defeated patient in hospital after
a serious operation. There were marriage and family problems. There were other
difficulties looming ahead. I did what any minister or pastor does. I listened. She
shared her problems. We read from the scriptures and prayed together. I feel so
much better she said, as she dried tears and smiled a bit. The help she needed was a
caring hand from a concerned pastor and friend.
As Christians we offer that hand to one another and to people and friends in need.
For that is what Christ is and means for us all. His faith shows us how to trust and
love God. His compassion shows us how to approach and treat others. His serving
life show us God’s way to live. His suffering and death show us the strength of love
to overcome past, present and future with God. Time is a mystery and gift. In this
New Year God can come to us again, surrounding us behind and before, but best of
all, to lay his hand upon us again. Amen.