(50) When Time Flies

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for When Time Flies, originally shared on September 24, 2020. It was the fiftieth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Where does the time go? Today we’re going to share some ideas on how to live faithfully as time passes during this pandemic.

   This was written for the 50^th video we posted in Streams of Living Water. I don’t think any of us imagined at the end of March that we would still in late-September be safer at home, still getting tested, still working from home (what some say feels like living at work), still going to school from home, still avoiding crowds, still wearing masks, still washing or sanitizing our hands, still worshiping outside, and still more in the new normal.

   And yet, here we are. Six months later. Time flies.

   The culture in which the New Testament was written had two ways of measuring time. Chronos… and Kairos… 

   Chronos was the way most people in the global West experience time, as one thing happening after another. We get our words chronology and chronograph from this Greek word. The other Greek word for time is Kairos. Kairos means when the time is right, when everybody gets here, when everything comes together, when it “feels” right.

   Human beings have different ways of experiencing time: my hero in church development, Lyle Schaller, reminded church leaders that when we talk about long-range planning we have to keep in mind that a 7-year-old knows that there are at least 750 days between birthdays. But a 70-year-old knows that there are no more than 125.

   The pandemic has given us yet another way of measuring time: slow and fast at the same time.

   I’m on a bunch of leadership committees for our synod. All are meeting by Zoom. I had two in one day the other day, and that’s not the most I’ve had.  You know, “Covido egro Zoom”.  I read about one manager who has his team on Zoom the whole workday in order to provide a more natural office experience.

   Is Zoom time faster or slower for you? Do you think it will every seem normal?

   I think most of us looked at what was coming last March, and thought about all the projects we could do, all the time we could spend together, all the things we could learn and improve. How have we done?

   I read about a study last week that found that while Christians spent more time reading the Bible than in the old normal at the beginning of the pandemic, they are now spending less time reading the Bible than before. They are spending less time in God’s presence through the Word of God.

   I wonder if the same isn’t true for prayer. The Bible is the primary way God speaks to us. If we’re reading, we’re listening. Prayer is the primary way we speak to God, and then listen in communion with God. How is your prayer life. Are you spending more time during this stage of the pandemic, or less?

   Maybe that’s not the right question. Prayer is not just putting in the time. It’s not a feeling or a heaping-up of emotion.

   One of my cousin’s is a very fine jazz guitarist named Pat Metheny. He has won 20 Grammys, in more categories than any other musician. We always look forward to his concerts when he’s in town. On night, his band played at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. We had gone backstage to hang out after the concert, so by the time we left the building it was quite late. There were very few cars in the parking lot behind the theatre but, as we passed a cluster of them, three guys walked out of the shadows toward us. I was wearing my clergy collar because, well, sometimes you just have to fly the flag. When the group spotted it, two of them peeled off and walked in another direction. But, the third continued walking directly toward me. As he approached he said, “Hey, Father. Father.”

   I’ve gotten used to people mistaking me for a priest, so I didn’t correct him. I like to think that he and his friends, if they had anything nefarious in mind, had changed theirs when they saw that I was a clergyperson.

   “Father, Father, would you pray for me?”

   “Sure, I’ll pray for you,” I said.

   “And, Father, Father, when you pray, could you pray for a long time?”

   “Sure,” I said.

   “And, Father, when you pray could you cry a little bit?”

   “Sure.”

   Some people have some funny ideas about prayer.

   Prayer isn’t reciting formulas or reading words.

   Prayer is talking with God.

   When we pray, we’re not telling God anything God doesn’t already know. Prayer is not informing God, or making announcements,

   Prayer is sincerity before God. It means being honest with ourselves, because God sees our hearts, our inner selves. Early 20^th century comedian Fred Allen once said that the most important thing in Hollywood is sincerity. So, when you can fake that, you’ve got it made.    

   You can’t fake it with God.

   The Psalmist writes:

*Psalm 51:10-17

   Prayer is a broken and contrite heart. Sometimes, it has no words, only gratitude.

   It’s not about a formula, like saying “Father God” every other word (I always wonder about the theology of that. The Holy Spirit is our intercessor, with sighs too deep for words; where does isolating God the Father come from?), or the words “just” and “really”, which are supposed to convey humility and passion I suppose, but just come across as fillers.

   I remember seeing a cartoon years ago where a guy is praying and says, “Lord, I just want really ask that you just really hear me when I really just want to ask you to just really help me to stop saying ‘just’ and ‘really” so much in my prayers.

   Repetition in prayer may have a hypnotic, psychological boost for us, but I don’t think they matter. Would you pay more attention to someone who kept repeating the same thing over and over?

   The key to prayer is authenticity, being honest with yourself in your communication with God. There is no pretense in prayer.

   See, I don’t believe in the power of prayer. Praying as if we believed that the source of power is our prayer is superstition.

   God has all power. God is not our cosmic butler, go-fer, or spiritual vending machine. We enter into God’s presence hat in hand.

   If our Bible reading is falling away and we are spending less time praying, and if we are spending less time in worship than before, our relationship with God suffers from our end.

   As a result, we are less concerned for justice. That is, doing God’s will.

   It doesn’t take much to figure out where that is taking us.

   We are going dry.

   But, if we are using this time to allow the Streams of Living Water to flow through us and form our lives into ones that are lived in service to God and to others, we stay Spiritually hydrated. The Streams that are the Holy Spirit, God’s personal presence for good in the world, are streams that lead to eternal life, in quality and in quantity, now and forever.  We then are living the joyful abundant live that God intended for all of humanity since the beginning of time.

   How about you? How is your Christian life doing during the pandemic? Leave your comments in the comment section below.

   What a tragedy it would be when this isolation is over and we can worship face to face with one another in the whole Christian community, if we will have only our own spiritual dryness to offer those who a drawn to genuine Christian community.

   Now it the time to return to the Lord, your God.

   Open your Bible with an open heart. Regularly. Pray, and ask that God would open your heart to God’s presence, to give you eyes to see and ears to hear.

   Open your hands for the work of God in the world.  

   Open your true self to know and maintain the faith that has been given to us, to serve others in response to the victory on the cross that Christ has won for us. Be joyful in the light of the already and not-yet Kingdom of God.

   Worship, serve, seek justice.

   Fill your dryness with the streams of living water that will never run dry.

   Seize this time, before it flies.