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September 16, 2002

There never is enough time. C.S. Lewis was an Augustinian in that he believed that all human beings were made for God and that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. Lewis offered some unusual proofs that we are made for God. For example, he points out that we are always shocked by the passage of time. We shouldn’t be. Time, after all, is the sea we swim in. But when, after some time, we see a little child that has grown to adulthood, we are astonished. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, as if such growth were a novelty. But what did we expect? That the child would remain forever small? Why is it that growth stuns us so? Unless, Lewis argued, unless we were made for something beyond time, something like eternity.21

Whatever you make of Lewis’ argument, it is the witness of scripture that the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ has time for us. “My times,” the psalmist claims, “are in your hand,” (Ps 31:15) a verse that appears in the same psalm Jesus quotes from the cross (“Into your hand, I commit my spirit.” Ps 31: 5). God has our time, and even more, has time for us. What greater gift is there than to have time for another? What worse thing can we do than to tell someone that we have no time for him or her? And what else is eternal life than to have, finally, enough time?

October 29, 2007

One of Eugene Peterson’s early books dealing with ministry was entitled, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (IVP Books, 2000), an accurate description, he thought, of the nature of this calling. His point was that the work of ministry—study, prayer, preaching, pastoral care, teaching, bearing witness in a particular community—is part of a long, long journey of faith, “a long obedience in the same direction.”

The notion that discipleship takes time contradicts one of our culture’s most cherished illusions, namely, that good things are “instant” and “quick” and “consumable.” The work of ministry is none of those things. And neither is the work of preparing to become ministers, which is why what we are doing here is so counter-cultural. Growth takes time and is not always smooth.

One might think that those of us who have been shaped by the Reformed tradition would know this better than some, given our emphasis on sanctification and growth in grace. But we do not, largely because we like our providential paths to be straightforward, well-organized, and planned. Forty years in the wilderness getting from Egypt to the Promised Land does not strike us as the most effective way to prepare for ministry. Following an itinerant rabbi throughout Galilee for three years and then heading toward certain trouble in the big city again does not appear to be the most fruitful way to go about preparation for discipleship.

We are offended by the mystery of a gospel that resists our efforts to render it more obvious and straightforward, just as the disciples were offended by Jesus who so often did things they did not understand. “A long obedience in the same direction” means there will be a lot of not knowing, struggling forward amidst the fog of many questions, dealing with the messiness of things not easily or quickly sorted out. This is hard, especially when one has a theology paper to write or a take-home New Testament exegesis to prepare, not to mention a job to do, a spouse to love, a home to make, children to nurture.

Yes, it is hard. But it is not just hard. There are pleasures in doing something hard that pleasure knows not of. One of the failings of our tradition is that in talking about “the long obedience in the same direction,” we have rarely mentioned the joy that accompanies this journey. Calvin wrote eloquently about self-denial, but not so much about the joy of being called to this work and being strengthened by others through our life in Christ. “The pay begins in this life,” one of the church’s saints has said.22 And indeed it does, but it never comes easily or cheaply. Discipleship, ministry, preparing for this work takes time, which is not a limitation but a gift.

March 25, 2009

This past winter I read Alan Jacobs’ book, Original Sin, A Cultural History. Jacobs has written extensively on matters theological and literary. In this book he notes the following in a footnote:

For centuries theologians and leaders of the church had affirmed that the key date in human history was March 25, on which date occurred the Fall itself; the angel Gabriel’s Annunciation to Mary, which heralded the birth of the One who would undo the effects of the Fall; and the Crucifixion, which defeated the forces of evil, which had been unleashed upon the world by Adam’s sin. It was with these events in mind that Dionysius Exiguus, the sixth-century monk and calendar-maker, determined that the year itself should begin on March 25, which it did throughout Europe for a very long time. It was England’s official New Year’s Day until 1752, though by that time January 1 had been celebrated by most English people for hundreds of years.23

Interesting. I had never realized that March 25 was such an important date. I do remember reading John Donne’s poem, “Upon the Annunciation and the Passion Falling Upon One Day (March 25, 1608)”. There he wrote:

All this, and all between, this day hath shown,

Th’abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one

(As in plaine maps, the furthest west is east)

Of the angel’s Ave, and Consummatum est.24

Which suggests that this is the day that comprehends all days—fall and redemption, annunciation and passion, our beginning and our end. I know that we no longer celebrate March 25th as New Year’s Day, and in truth, I am not advocating that we return to that calendar, but I am struck at how people of old saw in the narrative of Christ’s life the meaning of their own days and lives, and how our more recent calendars, geared to so many more pressing dates—academic, commercial, national, etc.—lack both the richness and joy of this way of numbering our days. Jacobs notes at the end of this extended footnote a curious reference to March 25th in more recent literature. He writes: “J.R.R. Tolkien, knowing this history very well, made a point of placing the destruction of the Ring and the overthrow of Sauron on March 25.”25 That Good Friday and Christmas and New Year could be so deeply connected fills me with strange delight, a sense that even if our calendars have become much more up-to-date, the story that comprehends our story knows a deeper way of counting and a more joyful way of hoping.

21. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 138.

22. Theresa of Avila, Meditations on the Song of Songs, 246.

23. Jacobs, Original Sin, 43.

24. Donne, The Complete Poems, 328.

25. Jacobs, Original Sin, 43.