Time

A foundational principle of The Christian Life is to be ever mindful that we are from ages to ages, world without end.
This human experience, this Christian Life, is a 2,000 year experience. Stop and think about that for just a moment. Two thousand years! Then, being grafted into the Jewish experience, another 2,000+ years can be added to ours. We trace ourselves back in time 4,000+ years.
Too many Christians act out of extreme insecurity, as if this present time and this present culture can be a detriment to the continuation of the Kingdom of God. I think our collective acting out is due to a lack of understanding that we have survived every naysayer, every controversy, every persecution, and every prediction of growing meaninglessness and death. The other side of the insecurity coin is when we become overly confident by thinking that is it because of our human endeavor that the Church has continued on, rather than God’s divine doing. My call is to live into the transformation that beings me into thousands of years of Life.
Our perspective should not be so short, so limited, so culturally myopic. We think of time, really, practically speaking, to be a lifetime – perhaps a couple generations of living relatives, but that is about it.
That which has survived for 4,000 years… for 2,000 years through persecutions (given out and received), though a myriad of cultures, through controversies, through wars and rumors of wars, through the whims of fallible humans thinking that are the very conduits of God – that which is maintained through ages of ages I think is pretty darn reliable.
This is a critique of our oh-so-modern-and-smart deconstruction of and repudiation of and attempted transformation of the Tradition. Do we really think that 100 years of attempted overturning of 1,900 years of lived experience makes us something special? Really?
We receive, we maintain, and we pass along this Christian Life. We attempt to make it better and we attempt reform by our bound-up and limited vision… but despite our attempts that which will remain and be given over to the next generations, for another 2,000 years more, will only be that which touches deeply the human heart as it longs for reconciliation with the Creator.
Now, I’m not suggesting that change is bad or is not needed. Change is a given! We are in need of reforming, continually. Too often, however, what we envision to be in need of reform is not. We are foolish to think that we are so smart now, in these limited days, that we can ignore the lessons of the past – ages of ages. Listen, listen carefully, to the Tradition. That which has survived through the millennia is slight, but it is deep speaking to deep and of the essence of The Christian Life. Our perspective of time is everlasting, but we limit ourselves so when we do not recognize it.