Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, ‘God is not in things of space, but in moments of time’. Sometimes I am blessed with the experience that there is no space where God is not present, but it is an insight into time, not space, that I wish to share with you today.
At a seminar I attended recently, participants were encouraged to bring everything to God, including every problem, no matter how small. I realised I rarely took work problems to God.
I am very conscious of how God helps me in my work, for which I am deeply grateful. I express that gratitude often, but seldom do I discuss with God specific work issues in detail. I will take people problems to God, when I want to overcome hurt or my own judgemental attitude, for example, but for the most part I am still tempted to believe there are some things I can handle on my own, and that there is no need to ‘bother’ God about them.
Yet in the seminar I was hearing that the God who keeps count of the number of hairs on my head is vitally interested in every aspect of my life and eager not only to help, but to companion me every step of the way. Of course, I already ‘knew’ that. ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ is one of my favourite hymns!
At a seminar I attended recently, participants were encouraged to bring everything to God, including every problem, no matter how small. I realised I rarely took work problems to God.
I am very conscious of how God helps me in my work, for which I am deeply grateful. I express that gratitude often, but seldom do I discuss with God specific work issues in detail. I will take people problems to God, when I want to overcome hurt or my own judgemental attitude, for example, but for the most part I am still tempted to believe there are some things I can handle on my own, and that there is no need to ‘bother’ God about them.
Yet in the seminar I was hearing that the God who keeps count of the number of hairs on my head is vitally interested in every aspect of my life and eager not only to help, but to companion me every step of the way. Of course, I already ‘knew’ that. ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’ is one of my favourite hymns!
Oh, yes, I knew it. I just wasn’t living my life as if I knew it!
The notion of resting in God by taking everything to God had immense appeal. It was a big effort to attend the seminar as I was very tired, so I needed little persuasion to allow a problem to present to my mind in the belief I could shift the burden of it.
What surfaced was a problem endemic to the nature of my work: time. I work to deadlines, and the stress of trying to meet them is partly due to a sense that there is not enough time to get the work done. I realised that, in a deeply debilitating way, I was living out of a sense of poverty, of lack.
I should have known that God was the solution. It’s obvious. Did God not create time? Is God not the Lord of time? And did I not have this demonstrated to me every Sabbath, the day which Heschel describes as ‘Spirit in the form of time’?
Not only does God own the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50:10), God owns time. God makes time and so God can freely give it away. There’s plenty more where that came from! And so it was that God blessed me there and then with all the time I need – not necessarily all the time I want, but there is time enough, God assures me, for all that needs to be done.
It is now a week since the seminar and there have been several occasions each day to remember this promise and rest in it. And my lifestyle is changing. I know there’ll be plenty of time for all that needs to be done, so I check in with God that what I’m doing is exactly that - what needs to be done. I’ve always appreciated the Sabbath as a sacred blessing, a gift. Now that God has also gifted me all the minutes in every day, they’re too precious to waste!
The notion of resting in God by taking everything to God had immense appeal. It was a big effort to attend the seminar as I was very tired, so I needed little persuasion to allow a problem to present to my mind in the belief I could shift the burden of it.
What surfaced was a problem endemic to the nature of my work: time. I work to deadlines, and the stress of trying to meet them is partly due to a sense that there is not enough time to get the work done. I realised that, in a deeply debilitating way, I was living out of a sense of poverty, of lack.
I should have known that God was the solution. It’s obvious. Did God not create time? Is God not the Lord of time? And did I not have this demonstrated to me every Sabbath, the day which Heschel describes as ‘Spirit in the form of time’?
Not only does God own the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50:10), God owns time. God makes time and so God can freely give it away. There’s plenty more where that came from! And so it was that God blessed me there and then with all the time I need – not necessarily all the time I want, but there is time enough, God assures me, for all that needs to be done.
It is now a week since the seminar and there have been several occasions each day to remember this promise and rest in it. And my lifestyle is changing. I know there’ll be plenty of time for all that needs to be done, so I check in with God that what I’m doing is exactly that - what needs to be done. I’ve always appreciated the Sabbath as a sacred blessing, a gift. Now that God has also gifted me all the minutes in every day, they’re too precious to waste!
What a Friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!
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