Life is Not About Time But Experience

[HKHaugan]

January First every year we celebrate a new year by man’s calculations. We reminisce about days gone by and fill ourselves with wishes and resolutions for making our time on earth better. But something far different is going on. By God’s calculations we live an experience that goes from one event to another each of which is new. Even as we sit here our self-consciousness, not limited to the charter of days, months and years, is flowing from one thought to another, from one feeling to another, one breath to another and from one person to another. Outside of God we are people who have limited ourselves to a worldly calendar, a worldly sense of time and the worldly principles devised to survive through it.

It is into this lost resignation that Jesus came to make the difference. What He brought into the world was a new man through Whom time as we know it was eclipsed by spiritual experience and every moment thereafter was a spiritual event waiting to happen depending on the choices made. He did this so that all of our moments would be new moments, new events. When Jesus came He baptized every next moment as the ‘right time.’ He revealed a new way to approach our consciousness as individuals. It was a 'right way', a spiritual way, a moral way to be self-conscious. In Jesus a man is measured not by what he does with his time but what he does with his experience. Let’s say that again, in Jesus a man is measured not by what he does with his time but what he does with his experience.

Now how do we know that life is not about earthly time but experience? The Bible gives us our bearings. If we look at time in Scripture it is a series of specific events, happenings. Jesus was born “…in time of King Herod (Mt.2:1)” who asked the exact ‘time’ the proving star appeared (Mt.2:7) and “the time came for the baby to be born and she gave birth (Lk.2:6).” The Bible is not about time but about a series of events, happenings and experiences built around the revelation of one particular person Jesus the Christ.

Outside of Creation the most significant event in the Old Testament is the Passover. It is the Passover that signals freedom for the Jews. In the New Testament the most significant event is Jesus and His embrace of the Passover pointing to Him. It is the Passover Feast in which Jesus drove the moneychangers from the Temple (Jn.2:13) and the Passover Feast He identifies as the ‘hour’ He came to be glorified (Jn.12:23) on the Cross. The interesting thing about the word ‘hour’ (in Greek, ora) is that its use signified not clock time as we know it but an event, a happening, something going on that was extended, an impression that logged in memory, a spiritual happening.

Further it had moral significance. It was a ‘right’ event which we would say was the ‘right time.’ Think of Jesus saying in John 12:23 “Now is the hour for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He was saying that the moment had arrived for Him to face a series of events in which each would demand a choice and a decision. All His events up to that point would be what enabled Him to take them and go to the Cross all alone for the sins of all our self-centered moments. Jesus was a man of continual events. He was an event. For all of existence He was THE event. What Jesus did was to make life an event into eternity. What’s more what He shows by His life is that every event of our lives registers as an eternal event.

Then there is the personal dimension into which our understanding of time and its hours are events to be celebrated as Jesus celebrated them. So two questions stand before us: What accompanies every event and what does an event require to handle its demands? Two answers will help us. First, there is the demand to meet it with reason, decision and action. Second, it follows that what is required is belief as the reason for the mind, trust for decision in the heart and faith for the spirit to act.

From the moment of His birth until the moment of His death Jesus faced every next moment with a choice leading to a decision and following it with action. Joel 3:14 What Jesus was doing was fulfilling what it meant to be a human being God’s way. If you will look closely at Jesus’ response in every next moment as recorded in the Gospels all of them are met spiritually as only a God-centered man could and would handle them. What Jesus was doing was living out the prophetic description facing every human being,

“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of Yahweh is near, in the valley of decision.   The sun and the moon are darkened, And the stars withdraw their shining."   Yahweh will roar from Zion, And thunder from Jerusalem; And the heavens and the earth will shake; But Yahweh will be a refuge to his people, And a stronghold to the children of Israel (Joel 3:14-16).”

What enabled Jesus to face every next moment? Three things: Belief in His Father’s will, trust in what His Father’s Word told Him and faith to act in the power of the Spirit through prayer.

More in the next posting.