{"id":5104,"date":"2010-12-09T09:49:39","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T15:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesusneedsnewpr.net\/?p=5104"},"modified":"2011-05-03T16:57:04","modified_gmt":"2011-05-03T16:57:04","slug":"a-blog-post-the-gospel-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesusneedsnewpr\/2010\/12\/a-blog-post-the-gospel-of-time.html","title":{"rendered":"A BLOG POST: The Gospel of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you ask any of us what we need most this holiday season, I can almost guarantee that most of us would say, \u201ctime.\u201d We need time to shop, time to clean, time to cook, time to think, time to make, time to waste, time to wrap, time to deck, time to work, time to look for work, time to sing, time to worship, time to travel, time to see our family and friends, time to eat, time to sleep, time to breathe. Time is the most valuable commodity, and we live in a world where time has no economy. We can\u2019t bank it, save it, or store it. It will pass regardless of what we do.<\/p>\n

So, how then do we fill this time when it passes so quickly away from us? We must pass it with purpose.<\/p>\n

The prologue to the Gospel of John is my favorite scripture passage because it captures the depth of God\u2019s love and purpose for creation. It begins, \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.\u201d God has a strange sense of time, no? For God, time is eternal, never-ending, expansive. So, for God, time has no need of being bartered or saved, because God is in<\/em> time. This passage speaks to the \u201cWord\u201d and God\u2019s being. This \u201cWord\u201d is not a simple uttered voicing of language, but the \u03bb\u03cc\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2 (Logos), the divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links humanity with God. When we consider that God created all things \u2013 from the smallest atom to the largest universe and everything in between\u2013 it all began simply with a breath from God. Whether you understand the Bible literally or more figuratively, we can agree that creation began as a \u201cformless void.\u201d How, then, did all of heaven and earth come to be from primordial chaos?<\/p>\n

Simply\u2026 with a Word.<\/p>\n

All of creation did not come to be in a day, but over the course of God\u2019s own time. For God, time does not pass with a sense of urgency, but in tandem with the events that unfold. In fact, it is the unfolding of these events that define time, not the other way around. In these weeks, is it possible for us to consider that what we do has purpose and fits together to the larger plan of our lives?<\/p>\n

As a knitter, I begin my projects with a single act: tying a knot. From that single knot, a whole connected flourish of yarn becomes something more than its individual parts of wool and sticks. It becomes a hat, a scarf, or (with a great amount of time and a modest amount of frustration) a whole sweater.<\/p>\n

We have to start somewhere, don\u2019t we? We cannot become deeply reflective spiritual beings in an instant. But, we can begin small. We come to church. We pray. We listen. We read the Bible. And, over the course of God\u2019s time (not ours), we find that we are becoming something more than our individual actions. We are becoming church. We are interwoven into the community. We find ourselves in the scriptures \u2013 which are no longer stories about something else, but about our own salvation. Christ becomes not a baby in a manger or a man on a cross, but a living savior who has lived and died that we might know God\u2019s love in the most visceral and human of ways. This season, let us remember that time is not ours to barter or save. Let us live in it, fully, and find God in the smallest parts of our lives that we might be present to accept the greatest gift we can receive: God\u2019s love in Christ.<\/p>\n

Mandy Sloan Flemming <\/strong>serves as the Minister of Christian Education and Spiritual Formation at Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Atlanta, GA and is wife to Matthew Flemming, who teaches preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary. This year, their oldest son started kindergarten, their middle son began Pre-K, they welcomed a beautiful baby girl and Mandy was ordained as an Elder in Full Connection in the UMC. She also made dinner one night, completely from scratch.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you ask any of us what we need most this holiday season, I can almost guarantee that most of us would say, \u201ctime.\u201d We need time to shop, time to clean, time to cook, time to think, time to make, time to waste, time to wrap, time to deck, time to work, time to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":412,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,103,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-guest-post","category-jesus"],"yoast_head":"\nA BLOG POST: The Gospel of Time - Jesus Needs New PR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesusneedsnewpr\/2010\/12\/a-blog-post-the-gospel-of-time.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A BLOG POST: The Gospel of Time - 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