thoughts on time...

As June approaches (as it write it is 10:007 in Burkina so really it is just to say June is nearly here.) I have been doing some thinking. I thought I’d share with you a little of what is going on in my heart and head.
As my return to the world I left at home draws nearer I consider more and more the idea of time. I consider how much time I have left here and how quickly my time here has gone past. As I consider the idea of time I realise how little I really understand about it. I know that sometimes I goes unbearably slow (usually when I am anticipating something) and at times it passes so quickly I barely have a moment to reflect on it’s disappearance. As I think about the nature of time a passage from a letter written by C.S. Lewis comes to mind:
"Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did would the fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not been or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (“How time flies! Fancy John being grown up & married! I can hardly believe it!” In heaven’s name, why? Unless indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal." -C.S. Lewis

I recognize that just as I am living currently in what I consider to be "two worlds" here on earth: Canada and Burkina, so two I struggle to be between two different temporal worlds. My body is limited by time: I am restricted by day and night, the passage of minutes, days, weeks, years... But my spirit is eternal and will have no end. And so it is natural that I feel this conflict of two “temporal worlds”. Time and eternity are undoubtedly a part of who I am.

Evelyn Underhill puts it so well when she says “Because we live under two orders we are at once a citizen of eternity and time. Like a pendulum, our consciousness moves perpetually [...]”
And so as I consider coming home to this other world I consider the fact that although perhaps time feels as though is passing quickly here, it’s because I am designed only part to be a resident of the world of time, but I am forever designed to be a resident of eternity where time has no meaning. Although for the moment I am a resident of two earthly worlds and I am navigating the fine balance of life in Burkina and life in Canada, I will for the rest of my earthly life navigate the balance of eternity and time. I will always struggle to understand why time escapes me, and why I cannot grasp it because my spirit is designed for something so much more magnificent where we won’t be bound to time. In heaven our vocabulary will be devoid of words like time-management, pressed for time, in a rush and I have to believe that will be magnificent.

Now that having been said once I’d thought all that through I assumed I was done with thinking. However, some nights later, I was thinking some more, and God was nudging at my heart. He reminded me that not only was my spirit designed as eternal and my body as temporal, but that all things are his. And if everything is Gods and he simply gives us things for our time here on earth, that means even our time here on earth is his. It sounds simple doesn’t it? I mean it really shouldn’t have taken me so long to piece the puzzle together. It was one of those things I knew, and God was reminding me (I find often those sorts of reminders are things we find we know, but God needs to remind us a lot..) Time, as much as I struggle with ‘des fois’, is a gift from God. He doesn’t owe me time here; he chooses to give me time here.