Meeting for Worship
November 28, 2001

What Time is It?
Ecclesiastes 3:1 – 8
J. Bill Ratliff, Prof. of Pastoral Care & Counseling

In high school, I played French horn and marched in the band. My hero and former band director had been drafted in the army during the Korean Conflict. For his first furlough, he returned to watch the band perform during half-time at a football game. The band had practiced hard and was ready to show him how good we were. As drum major I was leading the band down the center of the field, and gave the signal for me and the majorettes to swing left, to approach our side of the field. I forgot to give the signal at the right time for the rest of the band. When it finally occurred to me, I turned around and they were almost in the end zone! I quickly gave them the signal, while the majorettes and I double timed down the sidelines to meet them. That night we played to the cars parked near the end zone! What poor timing!! My preoccupation with making a good impression crowded out my sense of timing.

Time! Look around: Clocks and calendars are everywhere. Most of us wear a watch; our computers show the time. VCR’s and microwaves have built-in clocks. I have two clocks in my office! At home, this mantle clock is one that was in my living room while I was growing up. And this pocket watch was given to my father by his father as a high school graduation gift. Dad was especially proud of this one, since his older brother had lost his down the privy.

Yet, most of the people in the world do not live by a time piece. For indigenous people in much of Africa and the South Pacific, for example, events occur when things are ready. A Fijian guide once remarked: “You Americans worry too much about time. You want to have a crisis? Worry about time and you will have a crisis. For us in Fiji, we have all the time in the world.”

I invited you to remove your watches at the beginning or not look at them during this time of worship to become aware of how much we depend on staying on time. The question now is, how will we know when to end? Could we possibly discern when the right time is to end our worship by waiting on the Spirit? Well, that makes me a little nervous, but I hope to give that tenseness to God.

Sam Keen, in one of his books, writes that life is like crossing a river: In some places in the river, we need to swim hard to get through a fast-moving current or to avoid crashing on a boulder. In other places we can relax and let the current carry us. The key, he writes, is to discern what time it is in your life. This story has come to me during many passages in my life.

Discerning the time, the right time, the chairos time, is the thing, isn’t it. But how to do that? This is a personal question for me, because I am a life-long and well-honed CRAMMER. I have too much wonderful agenda for too little time, so what do I do? I cram. At bottom, I think I am preparing for death. I do not want to come to death’s door and regret that I did not get to do some thing. Or perhaps, who knows, if I am so busying cramming my life full, I will not notice creeping age and death. That illusion is harder to maintain as I am now in my sixth decade.

People talk about time as the great equalizer, since we all have the same amount. That is true for each day lived, but not true in the numbers of days lived. Some people live longer than others. So the total time that each person gets to spend on earth is slightly different, depending on a variety of factors, some of which are not in our control. And we want to be in control.

The interesting movie currently playing, entitled K Pax, is about a person who says he is from the distant planet called K Pax. He ends up in a mental treatment facility, where he is able to help the patients get better. Near the end, one of the patients asks him what the patient is to do. The answer: “Stay here. Be prepared for anything.”

As I was listening, that directive spoke to my condition: “Stay here. Be prepared for anything”. What time is it in my life? It is time to stay here. I understand that to mean that I am to live here in the present. At the same time I am to be prepared for anything. Now, it is really impossible to be totally prepared. But it is important to think about and prepare for the future, certainly for the next step, to follow one’s call—to be flexible.

Most of us at ESR are here because we feel that it is the time for us to be here. The difference between surviving at ESR and thriving here depends on discerning the right time, the chairotic time to study, to rest, to have fun, to blow our diet, to exercise, to have a break from classes, to go home, to talk to a friend, to worship, to listen, to speak, to sleep, to struggle with God. As Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is a time for everything. We can get so task oriented that we forget to do things to maintain ourselves and our health. And our culture, as well as ESR, tends to encourage this. Jay has set a good example, however, when he takes a day off after traveling for ESR—and he tells us about it!

In order to discern what time it is in our lives, we need the help of God and friends, who will do whatever it takes to get our attention when we need it. Our bodies are pretty good at telling us what they need, if we listen. Regular spiritual practice will give us a time to stop and listen for the time.

What time is it in your life, friends? Remember what Ecclesiastes writes further on in chapter three: “God has made everything suitable for its time; moreover God has put a sense of past and future into our minds…I know that there is nothing better for us than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” May it be so in these last days of our semester, on this, the 28th day of November 2001.