On Time-Keeping

Two old clocks hold places of honor in our home. They don’t keep time very well, and I never wind them because various family members find their ticking to be reminiscent of Poe’s “Telltale Heart.” Nevertheless, I love these clocks. They are family clocks, one from my father’s mother and one from his father. Somehow these old silent clocks connect me to the rhythms of life on the farm in Iowa in the early 1900s and help me feel grounded.

Our lives are built around time. Do I have time for that? How much time till my next appointment? What time is it? At any given point during the day, without looking I probably know what time it is within 20 minutes, and often I know exactly what time it is because my phone is connected to the official keeper of time in Greenwich. With one click I can tell you what time it is anywhere in the world.

Of course, throughout much of the world today, and throughout most of history, time was told not by clocks or even sundials, but by the location of the sun and the seasons of the earth. When time is measured in days, weeks, and seasons rather than minutes and seconds, does a person stay more connected to what truly matters? If I didn’t have a way of knowing what time it is, would I be less caught up in what I’m accomplishing and more caught up in who I am—and who you are? Could I focus on truth and relationships if I didn’t know that I had fifteen minutes until it was time to leave to pick up the kids from school, and that is just enough time to fold a load of laundry?

All of this has been on my mind this week as I’ve studied Psalm 90:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. . . . A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. . . . [We are] like a dream, like grass . . . in the morning it flourishes and is renewed, in the evening it fades and withers. . . . The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. . . . Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. . . . Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. . . . Establish the work of our hands!

Usually when we talk about our days being numbered that is a bad thing, but the psalmist tells us that living with the end in mind is the key to wisdom. Knowing that this life is passing like a dream helps us live as we ought within the bounds of time, because it makes us look to the eternal God who holds time in his hands.

Living with a view toward eternity and an awareness of the fleeting nature of earthly life does not mean that our days here don’t matter. To say that is to divorce spirit and substance and to embrace the heresy of Gnosticism. Rather, numbering our days helps us to find satisfaction in the only place it can be found—in God himself, in his steadfast love, and in the work he has given us to do here and now. It helps us find our dwelling place in God, the one to whom we will one day fly away. He is the true keeper of time, the one who sets boundaries to our days of toil and trouble.

As my ancestors listened to the ticking of these old clocks, I wonder what they were thinking. Did they feel pressured to get to the next thing like I do? Did they feel inadequate when they didn’t finish the day’s work? Maybe that never happened because they had more realistic expectations of what could be accomplished between sunrise and sunset.

I suspect that for them the ticking of the clock was a soothing sound that connected them to the community. It marked the time for the rhythms of planting and harvesting, or the time for a day of rest and worship. And I guess that’s part of why I like to have these clocks around. They remind me not to be a slave to time, but to make the most of my days. They remind me that just as my ancestors who wound these clocks each week for their whole lives have slipped into the arms of Jesus, so will I one day. They cause me to look to the God who has been faithful to the generations of my family, the one who will be my dwelling place for eternity, and to allow him to satisfy me each morning with his steadfast love and gently urge me to let him establish the work of my hands as day moves toward night.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.—Sonnet 60, William Shakespeare