The Effects Of TIME, part 1

It happens to everyone at some point, or in many points of life. We revisit an old home where we used to live many years ago. We hear an old song that reminds us of some fond memory. We find a fishing rod, a bowl, a ring or watch, perhaps a photograph rediscovered that brings a tear to the eye and perhaps a few moments of weeping.  When we dry our eyes and begin to fondly stare or hold that which reminds us of the past we see many things.  We remember how the old house used to look before the vines grew over it and the porch was caved in.  We can almost turn around and hear the voices of our friends long gone as we grasp what was once theirs.  We notice how the photo has faded and cracked and how surprised we were because we remember what it looked like crisp and new.  Perhaps you see yourself in the photo and how you looked 30-60 years ago.  All this brings back many emotions, but it also reminds us of one crucial truth.  Time is moving and so are we.  At this writing I am in my 30's and I can't number the times I wished I could step back in the photo or, walk downtown the way it was.  For most Americans born before the 1980s, our world was so much better than it is today.   Yet in all this whether we like it or not, we can no more bring back the past, raise the dead, or reinitialize history, we are all going forward.

What does this mean to the 21st century Christian?  

First, it should mean that we are still under the same commission we were back in the 1950's or from whenever you trusted Christ.  Though all the world has changed every moment since, HE has remained the SAME.  And in the same realization, men and women are still dying in their sins daily.  Our charge, our place, our responsibility is to win them if at all possible.  Not all of us are evangelists and preachers, and even if we are not all of us can be out preaching all the time. In fact today's society responds very little to preaching, they more respond to personal encouragement through a kind act or word.  Something they can see is different, for the good, in your life that is not in theirs.  We cannot go back or stammer at the way things were.  BUT we can build on them and see how God worked in the past and know that He still works the same way in the present.  He doesn't change.

The second meaning to the effects of time is that though we may be hindered, we are not mothballed.  When writing this I am thinking of the World War II battleship USS Missouri.  After its celebrated war career it was reactivated in the Gulf War years to serve again.  The ship was out of date yes, but her usefulness was not.  Refitted and Re-armed she served her country one more time.  You can be useful wherever you are or what age you are.  One phrase that has always stuck with me is "grow where your planted."  I don't care much for "ministers constantly on the move."  (Evangelists, relief workers, mobile ministries excluded) For some that is OK, but for me and most of us, God put us right where He did to serve right where we are.  Some folks like my Grandpa has had the physical strength to keep working hard till the day they meet the Lord, others do not.  That's OK.  God never measures our service by our strength to produce the product, but more so by the heart willing to produce the product.   He knows these bodies fail, He lived in one for 33 years. But He also knows that we, like the USS Missouri still have use left within us.  You may be "reduced" to making an encouraging telephone call or sending a spiritual note of encouragement, but I tell you that's NO reduction in God's eyes.   The older I get the more I realize the smaller the service, the lesser known the act, the more glory God can derive.  Its times people have nearly stepped into Eternity without Christ save that someone who, feels useless because of time and failing body, has called or visited and shared Christ one last time--that time has changed the other person's life forever.   

Time will take its toll on buildings, photographs, bodies, anything that exists in this world.  It is good to look back, but its better to look forward.  Its not easy, I am not saying it is, but its necessary.  One day, time will be no more, its effects will be gone.  The question is, how will the EFFECT of your Time be on others?

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Photo courtesy of Christy Russell