(This week’s devotions are based on Sunday’s message: Win the Day…Wind the Clock – LISTEN HERE)
Tick…tock…tick…tock…
The rhythm of a clock is barely heard today with digital everything. A vivid memory of childhood was the clock we had in our living room. The “tick-tock” was very noticeable and the reality was, if dad didn’t wind the clock, it would stop running.
The sound of the clock was a reminder that time was progressing. Every tick was replaced with a tock and the ticks of the past could never be relived. Once time had passed, it was gone.
Time is a precious commodity. We have a limited amount of it. The challenge is we don’t know how much of it we have.
To win the day, we want to better understand time and our relationship with it. Why? Time is not just a practical part of each of our days, it is part of our life of faith as well. How we manage the time we have is really a spiritual battle that wages in us. Time is not the problem, how we view and use it can be.
Consider this. Time was the first thing God created. God exists outside the bounds of time, yet the result of the first thing he created, light, was the establishment of a pattern that is called day. “There was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Genesis 1:3). While “light” is often, and rightly so identified as the key thing that was created on day one of creation week, we should not pass lightly over the reality that the first day, or period of time, was also created. From that point on (contrary to some who want to make “day” a long period of time) a period of darkness and light have defined a day, a period of time. God wanted his world to have marks of time and period of time. On day four, God not only created our current light sources (sun and moon), but he put the heavenly lights to “mark seasons and days and years.”
Genesis 1:14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
Time was such an important part of God’s creation that two of the six days had time elements created and set in place.
Why would an eternal God create time?
Time was the framework on which creation would operate. Life would have rhythms and cycles that would guide the life of humanity and creation. Life would have age and maturity not only defined by experience but by time.
Time would identify spiritual rhythms as God established the six days of work and then a day of rest structure that has and still guides us in our work-faith balance.
Time with its boundaries would lead us to yearn for that which was eternal. While days defined man’s existence, the reality of eternity was imprinted on them as well. The temporal was distinguished from the eternal.
Time would allow the realization of God’s blessing and grace on a daily basis.
Time would be another reality that is defined and orderly, a gift and blessing for people to enjoy.
Time is a created gift of a gracious God.
Apply: Why do YOU think the eternal God created time? Email your thoughts!
Prayer: O eternal God, thank you for the creation of time and the blessing it brings to me. Thank you for today. AMEN.