We’re recently started a new series called “reset”. In the first week, we talked about how Jesus makes it possible to reset all of life, giving us a fresh start in life that impacts every key area. We’re going to look at many of these in depth, and this week we see how Jesus resets our use of time.
There was a time in my life when I prided myself on never needing a day planner. I remembered everything I signed up for, and never double booked. That was high school. Ever since, I’ve found my time needed to be managed.
Through university, I started to rely on a day planner, an old fashioned spiral bound book. I got progressively busier, but could still say yes to pretty much anything I wanted. I would stay up all night getting things done if I needed to. I was young.
By the time I started working, I had to start making choices. I can only be in one meeting, one event, or one place at a time. When I first pastored a church, I was still working as a paramedic on the side, until I finally realized I simply didn’t have the time to do both things well. And still today, I find myself constantly choosing between demands on my time. It’s only escalated since having children.
I can go on. You probably can, too. Bottom line, unless we’re still kids, time is all about choices. It’s a limited resource – we can’t create it, we can only choose how to use it.
The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis
But what if you could reset your clock?
That used to be easy – whenever I’ve started a new job, I feel like it’s a chance to structure my time differently, within the constraints of set tasks, family and personal responsibilities.
But even then, it’s never clear what’s best. Read one thing that says “say yes to every invitation, you never know who you’ll meet” but then I’ll read something else that says I should learn to say “no” to more invitations to protect my sanity and family. Which is it?
With an extra hour, I don’t know whether I should work more, play with my kids, read the Bible, exercise, fix things around the house, or what. Someone will advocate that each one is most important. Time marches on.
Closely connected with goals, last week’s topic.
Question: What would you do with an extra hour in the day? Why? What would be your goal?
Reminder: The best way to grow spiritually this year is to join our Christianity 101 in the Cafe Course. Register for you and a friend today and come Wednesday night!
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In our series on Christmas as the Night that Changed Everything, this week we’re looking at how it’s the night that changed the poor. The poor have a priveleged place in the story of Jesus' birth at Christmas. Here is where that really shows:
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:4-7)
When a politician visits a troubled area, it’s important. I recall after the 1998 ice storm in Eastern Ontario, the Prime Minister visited Wolfe Island, where I used to volunteer as a paramedic. Years later, people would still talk about how the Prime Minister had come, and how. They knew in that moment that he’d seen what they were dealing with, through his own eyes.
Here in the Christmas story we see God doing that. He has come to visit our broken and hurting world, and has let the entire population know that he is here with us – from rich to poor, young to old. It’s so apparent in that he comes to earth not like pampered royalty, but as a homeless baby.
His parents are on their way to Bethlehem for the census. They must travel, even though Mary is pregnant and close to birth. They arrive, apparently without plans for accomodations (or their plans are cancelled when an unmarried pregnant woman arrives) and find no room in any inns. If they had money, you can imagine they might buy their way out of trouble, but it doesn’t happen, and they end up in a stable. The baby is born, wrapped in cloths, a poor, defenseless baby whose parents are doing the best they can, which isn’t much. The word translated as stable may be a building dedicated to animals like we think, or it’s possible it represented a one room house with both animals and people, but either way it was modest.
This is not a story of privelege and power. Why would God – who we would expect to come in majesty and splendour – arrive in this way?
Question: What might God be trying to tell us in coming to earth in this way?
Reminder: We are reading the Bible in sync as one community - so check out today's reading here.
