A TIME TO … WAIT?

When you are waiting for something special, time seems to come to a stand-still. For children anticipating Christmas, it can feel like an eternity waiting for Santa to make his world-tour. For adults rushing to get every last holiday detail in place, Christmas can come too soon. And yet the span of days for the children is the same span of days for adults, making our experience of time relative to our frame of reference.

Einstein had a theory when it came to our experience of time. He called it the Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein observed that time moves differently for objects in motion than for objects at rest. Traveling fast enough, such as at light speed, time might even come to a stand-still. Surely this must explain how Santa can get so much done in one night – those reindeer are cranking out some serious light-power!

But to prove Einstein’s theory of special relativity, we would have to do the impossible – go on a sleigh ride with Santa, or conduct our own experiments at light speed. Impossible. So our faith in the accuracy of the Theory of Special Relativity relies on mathematical equations.

For Christians time can be no different. In Christian tradition, the weeks leading up to Christmas are known as the season of Advent. It’s a season when we prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, but it’s also a time when we anticipate the promise of His return.

But it’s been a long wait.

It’s been nearly two thousand years since those first believers expected Christ’s reappearance to transpire at any moment. There have been a lot of empty moments that have passed since then. A lot of lives have come and gone. A lot of hope in a world gone wrong.

Time marches on and we’ve not experienced His return as expected. People naturally formulate algebraic equations trained to the patterns of our experiences – Christ hasn’t returned in my grandparents’ lifetimes, and He hasn’t returned in my parents’ lifetimes, therefore it is unlikely He will return in my lifetime.

Over time complacency replaces expectancy. We shift our focus from divine realities to the appeal of temporal satisfactions.

But the Christian calculation of time shifts beyond our earthly experience back to divine realities. Divine mathematical understanding of time is this – “a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day.” Sounds a bit like Einstein’s relativity. But this quote wasn’t inspired by human genius. This equation came from a simple fisherman who happened to respond when Eternity approached him in the flesh and said, “Follow Me.”

If the rate at which time passes truly does depend on our frame of reference, what is time from an eternal perspective? When One has no beginning and no end, time is relative. But for us finite beings whose own timelines in this life began the moment we were conceived to the moment we release our last breath, waiting can be hard. Waiting can feel pointless when time drags on.

But do children give up on Santa on December 23rd just because they’ve been waiting since December 1st, or even before? No! Their anticipation increases the closer Christmas comes.

We are closer to the Lord’s return than ever before. We should take a lesson from those children and be growing in our own anticipation. We should take a lesson from Einstein and start moving toward eternity, because time is different when we stand still.

Scripture says God is patient. He, too, is waiting. After all, where would I be if Christ had come back twenty years ago before I picked up the faith? Where will you be if He came back today? Could it be that Christ’s reference of time is different than ours? Or could it be that He is giving us a little more time for more people to come to Him. Because when He returns, the time offered us to make that decision will come to an end.

What is your frame of reference to time? Are you standing still, or are you moving toward Eternity? You may have tired of waiting for Christ, but He never tires of waiting for you.

Theresa Danley,

Commissioned Lay Pastor

Milk River Churches

(Presbyterian Church of Chinook, Chinook United Methodist Church, Chinook American Lutheran Church, First Presbyterian Church of Havre)