One hard in life we all face is the swift passage of time. Spoken with a mixture of surprise, anxiety and lament, the phrase “time goes so fast” echoes through days and decades. We cannot corral enough time to accomplish ”all the things”. What time we have we often hurry along by focusing on some future event or phase of life, while the moment we are in slips by with little notice. We can’t wait to be a teenager. Blink, we’re married with children who can’t wait to be teenagers. I hear my own laughing voice teasing grandchildren to, “Stop growing!”, but somewhere deep inside mean every word. Who doesn’t wish to change the pace of passing life? To slow time down? Who isn’t exhausted with balancing the urgent with the important?

Our first decades we become vaguely aware of a glass timepiece counting our days with a slow but consistent dropping of sand from an upper chamber, through the constricted space of ‘this moment’, then piling up “spent” in the glass below. Yet, stunned, we one day discover more sand piled in the bottom than is left to pour through from the top.

We live with the delusion that as we age, time will slow down. Quite unnerved, we hear seniors sharing our concern that days fly by; even claiming an acceleration in the passing of time. 

With each new invention and technological marvel, we risk contentment in the slow and simple, as time is propelled by our quest for more activity, more travel, more knowledge, more stuff. Who dares to count the endless screen time, sucking us away from our present and our people into the vacuum of lost time. Our heads spin with the insanity of it all.  

And yet, this is not a new phenomenon. Centuries ago, the Psalmist, bemoaned to God, “You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath.” (Psalm 39:5) How many of us feel that in this moment? That life is “but a breath”.

One attempt to control time is to stuff our days full to the brim and overflowing. After all, the more we can “do” in 24 hours, the less time we waste. So we run from lists to appointments, from tasks to recreation, from job to project. We hurry to get “this” finished so we can rush to “that”, which we push through to scurry to the “next”.  In the process, we race by precious moments, that when swept together by the winds of our hurried pace create mounds of lost opportunities. It isn’t time that needs to slow down. It’s we who need to slow down.

Needed and affirming benefits result from working hard; from reaching goals. But, investing too much of ourselves in things that will perish, rather than the things that count for eternity, can wreak havoc, not only in our physical lives, but in our very soul.

So how do we deal with this phenomenon of too little time, moving too fast, with the temptation to squeeze in more? Here are 3 guidelines to consider:

1. Spend less time doing and more time being. Being aware of and soaking in our present. Being in relationship with friends and family. Being still in God’s presence.

2. Hold plans with a loose grip. Instead of being driven by expectations and goals, become driven by the Spirit. Guided by His wisdom. Make plans in pencil, understanding that our sovereign God’s plans may not coincide with, and indeed supersede, our own. Peace enters as we loosen our grip. Annoyance at a change in plans turns to smiling anticipation of what He’s up to.

3.  Keep eternity an every day perspective. We cling to each moment as if we only have these few short years on earth, and then all is said and done; as if we don’t live with the knowledge that this life springboards into ocean depths of eternity. So as we live with an appreciation of the fragile and fleeting nature of our life on earth, just below the surface bubbles a suppressed excitement of coming life, experienced with Jesus and each other in endless, immeasurable time.

In Psalm 90:12, the psalmist asks God to teach us to number our days, acknowledging the shortness and preciousness of life, while gaining wisdom to live our days in His anointing and purpose. May it be so for each of us.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash