Using Our Time

“Time is how you spend your love.” Zadie Smith

I wonder why I have never thought of love in just this way. It strikes me as being not only true but also an easy way to test whether or not I am really following the new commandment from John 13:34-35. “Let me give you a new commandment: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another This is how everyone will recognize that your are my disciples - when they see the love you have for each other.”

It is easy to give lip service to the idea of this kind of love but far harder to actually put it into practice. We all have excuses as to why we can’t. We are too busy, too old, too poor. The excuses go on and on. But what is the most precious commodity that we all have? Isn’t it time? Once a day, an hour, or even a minute has passed, we can never recapture it. Unlike material things we can’t hoard it like the Rich Fool [Luke 12:13-21] or can we invest it in such a way that it will accrue interest and multiply.

If we love our families, we give them our time. If we love our work, we willingly give it 110% of our time. Some people might spend most of their days during the summer tending the flower beds, while others are on the golf course any chance they get. We all are different and choose to spend any available time in different ways. But have you ever stopped to consider just what the way you choose to spend your time is saying about how you love, not just those near to you but the 'other' as well?

Whenever we give our time to another, be it face-to-face over a cup of coffee or long distance via email or text, it is love being expressed. Schlepping clothes at a clothing depot or chopping onions in a soup kitchen, is love being expressed. Taking time to read a story to a toddler or to play fish with an 8 year old, is love. Sending letters to your MPP to give your input on the minimum wage, health care, immigration or education is love speaking to the needs in society. Attending demonstrations and sit-ins, lobbying corporate concerns and boycotting products, all show love, love for the environment and love for the underdog.

So I’m challenging you at the end of each day to about think those opportunities you took to show love that day, as well as those you missed, those opportunities to love others AND yourself that are now gone forever. Then vow to yourself to do better tomorrow!

Comments

This, too ...

‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going.’ -Hebrews 11:8 Dr. Theresa Tam, Chief Public Health Officer of Canada, says this, too, will pass . Dr. Eileen de Villa, Medical Official of Health for Toronto, says this, too, will pass . Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada, says this, too, will pass . But will it really??? Some days this feels like an unending struggle with just one tiny step forward and not just two, but more like a dozen steps back. Of course I’m talking about COVID-19 with all its associated variants. We might even be forgiven for rewriting that well known quote from Ecclesiastes to read…. For everything there is a season,…but just not for this ! Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French priest, might well have been talking about COVID when he penned the lines below: We should like to skip The ...

Challenging Faith

“All giving constitutes a challenge to faith because there is no guarantee of a return.” When I heard this statement as part of a sermon on Rogation Sunday, my ears pricked up and my mind started to spin. The rest of the sermon had things to say as well, but this sentence is still the one that has stuck with me. It made, and is still making me think! For those of us who identify ourselves with the church, whenever we hear the word ‘givings’ our minds go immediately to what we put on the offering plate each Sunday and for that we expect, but are not guaranteed, that the church will be there for us when we need it; for weddings, baptisms, funerals and other rites of passage. However what intrigues me about this quotation is that first word. “ ALL giving constitutes a challenge …” And how true it is! Each time we ‘give’ something away and it doesn’t have the expected return, it is upsetting and we have all had that experience. I remember many years ago s...

"Property of Jesus"

Have you seen people wearing shirts that say "Property of Jesus" Perhaps you have seen them for sale in a Christian book store? Have you stopped to consider just what that motto says about the wearer, or more importantly just what it might say about you? 'Property' in a business dictionary, is defined as: " Quality or thing owned or possessed . In Law: Article, item, or thing owned with the rights of possession, use, and enjoyment,... " So if we are the property of another, then they have complete control over us. We are in fact their slave . According to the dictionary, a slave is " someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay ; a person who is strongly influenced and controlled " I wonder if the persons wearing these shirts ever consider what they are actually proclaiming? If in fact they are the 'Property of Jesus', does that not mean that they have no choic...

An Allegory

Once upon a time there was a knight and his lady, who lived contently for many years in a southern kingdom. As they aged however, their manor became too big for them and so they decided to relocate in a northern kingdom where smaller quarters were available. They left their friends of many years with a sad good-bye and set off for new adventures. They settled quite happily in their new abode, and joined in all the activities and merry-making until one day, they had to drop out of some of the activities because of their declining years. No one came to ask them why they were no longer taking part. Instead the rest of the folk in that kingdom ignored them and it became very lonely for the knight and his lady The king suggested that they might be happier is a neighbouring kingdom and so they moved a short distance and set up house one more time. This time though things went well for many years. Then the king died. The heir apparent had many different ideas about what ...

Hope springs eternal....

The season of Advent starts this coming Sunday, the beginning of the church year. I have decided to do something a little different and so for the next 4 weeks, I will be reflecting about a different verse in a well-known Advent hymn. Each Sunday in Advent, a candle in the advent wreath is lit in our homes and during our worship services. The lighting of the candle is usually accompanied by readings and/or singing. Here is the first verse of " A Candle is Burning ", with words by Sandra Dean and sung to the familiar tune of "Away in a Manger" . " A candle is burning, a flame warm and bright, A candle of HOPE in November's dark night While angels sing blessings from heaven's starry sky, Our hearts we prepare now for Jesus is nigh " Or as Desmond Tutu said, "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness." As the days in the northern hemisphere grow darker with the shortest day of the year o...

But that's NOT what I meant!

35 years ago now, when I was going to university, I remember having my essays read by someone who I trusted both for their knowledge of English grammar and for the subject matter. I can also remember saying on more than one occasion when looking over their suggestions for changes, ‘But that’s NOT what I meant!’ Somehow I felt that the validity of my ideas was being challenged. I had long ago forgotten about these exchanges, but they came to the forefront of my thoughts again this past week. Thinking about them from a distance, I now believe that my editor wasn’t deliberately changing my thoughts but rather was just putting what they perceived as the meaning I was trying to make into better grammar. At the time, however I saw it as an attempt to actually change the meaning. And how often this happens to us in our daily lives. Someone reads this blog and really likes it because it said …. and I have to go back to the written word to look at it again because I don’t remember hav...

Another Road

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they [the Magi] left for their own country by another road.” Matthew 2:12 NRSV Just the other day I was out with a friend. As we were leaving to go home we decided ‘go by another road’ and the comment was made about how biblical that was. But as I heard the preacher’s opening to their sermon this past week, suddenly I had a very different understanding of just what those words meant in the context of the story of the magi. One might say I had an epiphany! We don’t know anything about who wrote the gospels or even when or why the gospels were written. We can surmise that the authors were writing down these stories in an attempt to pass on the transformative effect the life and teachings of Jesus had had on their lives and perhaps the lives of others around them. So I have come to understand the two birth narratives to be an attempt to rewrite his birth showing this importance. As angels sang, he was revered by t...

Faces

“Poor and afflicted and oppressed people have faces, and we are required to look squarely into them. We can’t love what we won’t experience.” ~Nancy Mairs Years ago the women’s group at the church that I was attending was talking about the arrival in the neighbourhood of a home for abused women. As various ideas were put forward as to how we might react to this, a couple of the ladies were very forthright in their disagreement. After all, they said, these women had asked for it! Despite this, the evening ended with a decision being made to start a clothing centre for these women who would arrive at the shelter with little besides the clothes on their backs. Being good Christian woman, both of these ladies signed up to take a shift or two a month. Imaging my surprise when a few months later one of them came up to me after church to tell me the ‘those’ women were just like everybody else! Now a story from a little closer to home. We spent three weeks in Cape Town, Sou...

Our Voices

‘ We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.’ -Malala Yousafzai What difference can one person [or one voice] make? That is a question I hear repeated over and over. We feel so helpless, so powerless in the face of whatever tragedy has befallen, whatever need there is. I know. I’ve been there nightly watching the human suffering on the TV news as I’ve seen the women and children huddling in the rubble hoping to escape from the next blast, the appalling conditions on our own reservations where again the children are doing without the necessities of life. ‘How can this be?”, I ask myself and feel even more hopeless. With all the focus on the Syrian refugee crisis in the news recently, my mind has gone back some 37 years to 1978 when I was part of a group that sponsored a boat family. In fact over the next 6 or 7 years that same group sponsored 27 people, at four different times, coming from Vietnam and South America. I clearly recall at ...

To walk humbly with your God ...

1 Peter 5:5[b] …Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Have you ever been asked to chair a committee or lead a discussion, and said “No” even if you secretly wanted to? Have you ever responded to a compliment by belittling the speaker’s words? Have you ever ‘pooh-poohed’ the suggestion that you did something well? Well, I have, to all of the above. After all weren't we taught in Sunday school that we should be humble and not think too highly of ourselves? But how many of us have said “I can’t be the secretary because I can’t spell?” or “I don’t like your idea because it isn’t mine?” I wager that, like me, you come up with another excuse like “I’d love too but I’m much too busy!” or “I like your idea but it would never work!” What if we have the meaning of being humble backwards? What if being humble actually means that we are to admit our shortcomings to others rath...

NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

Search This Blog