What Time Is It?

When asked what time it is, most people will think of the answer as morning, afternoon, or evening. Others will think of the exact clock time, such as 10.30am, for example. But time is a much deeper and complex concept.

Science, philosophy, and religion have influenced our understanding of the concept. Some Christians believe that time came out of and is a minute part of eternity. Time is then segmented in other ways, such as dispensations, eons, eras and so on. For example, we have the dispensation of the law and the dispensation of grace.

Science has a view too, but it is an evolving view. To some physicists, time is the fourth of ten dimensions; the first three being length, width, and depth.

Only the first three are universally agreed and verifiable dimensions. Let’s avoid any further complications by overlooking any reference to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Last month, the world joined the British royal family to mourn the passing of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. He died at ninety-nine, and less than a hundred days to turning hundred. That is a long time by any standard. In most African societies, the rite of passage of anybody at that age would take many days to complete. Yet, ninety-nine years is only about a tenth of Methuselah’s age. At nine hundred and sixty-nine years, he was the oldest man that ever lived.

From the first few chapters of Genesis, God didn’t want human beings to get confused about time. Indeed, the Bible is deliberate in the way it weaved stories around times and seasons. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. Genesis 1:14.

The book of Genesis spells out how long Adam and his descendants lived. And genealogies are the diet in the book of Chronicles. You want to finish reading the book of Chronicles in a hurry. Few people derive pleasure or understanding from reading genealogies. But without those interventions, we won’t know that death has been working in man to shorten his days on the earth. Adam lived for nine hundred and thirty years. By contrast, Abraham lived for one hundred and seventy-five years and was said to have died at a good old age. Meanwhile, Methuselah had his son, Lamech, when he was one hundred and eighty-seven years old. In the book of Psalms, the Bible puts human lifespan at seventy, plus a few years for good health.

This post is not about an explanation or defence of the Biblical perspective of time. Instead, it is to get you to think about what time of life you are in.

In Ecclesiastes 3, the preacher carries out a detailed explanation of time. First, everything has an allocated time or season. Second, there is an allotted time for every purpose or assignment. There is a time to be born and to die. There is a time to plant and a time to harvest, and so on. Thus, you can experience the extremes of love and hate; war and peace; exuberant joy and deep mourning.

Next, the preacher says that God makes everything beautiful in His time. God has His own time. For example, no one else knows the great day of judgement, not even the angels who minister in His presence. Matthew 24:36. The day of judgment is the day when the time allotted for this dispensation is complete, not one day sooner, not one day later.

Third, God planted the idea of eternity in the human heart but didn’t give him the ability to discover the total picture from start to finish. Ecclesiastes 3:11.

We commend scientists and inventors for doing a lot for our civilisation with their discoveries and inventions. Many of those discoveries and inventions are the bedrock of our lifestyle today. However, they have their limitations. Scientific research utilises observations, experimentation, and deductive thinking. These tools only have answers within the physical frame of reference, a mere fraction of our collective experience.

It is in the physical dimensions that we have a start and an end to things. It is in this realm that things grow and die. The spiritual realm has no such limits, and science doesn’t account for the spiritual component of our experience.

Because events and actions have a beginning and ending, it is possible to have divisible timeframes. And because the Bible talks about the end of the ages, we know that this earth will one day cease to exist. The earth is growing old like a garment, and one thing is for sure, the end of this dispensation is near.

So back to the question: what time is it? What time is it for you as a person? What time is it for you as a man or woman, husband or wife; father or mother; priest or layperson? Are you edging towards your prime? Or are you in or past it? Can God still depend on you to fulfil your destiny? Can your assigned target audience still hope in your ministry?

Promise me, O women of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and wild deer, not to awaken love until the time is right. Songs of Solomon 2:7.

There is a right time for everything. If you awake some things before their time, catastrophe will be the outcome.

The Greeks had two words for the concept of time – Chronos and Kairos. From Chronos, we derive the word chronology. It’s the calendar time or time in successive sequence. Kairos on the other hand is used for specific moments.

It is easier to understand the idea of Chronos. For example, a child starts the first year of school at age five. The voting age begins at eighteen. There is no debate. But when are you going to get married? That depends on factors beyond your control. However, those factors are not beyond God’s control. You have a ministry, but when should you start? You have a business idea, so when should you put in your resignation letter?

These do not have straightforward answers. And yet, they define how well we do in life. Remember the passage in Songs of Solomon and do not awaken anything until the right time. The right time here is the Kairos time.

Knowing what your times and seasons hold can make a difference to your ability to maximise opportunities and quality of life. You will have seasons of deep spiritual emphasis, seasons of prayers, of the study of the word of God. Seasons of giving and receiving nothing in return and so on. Then you will also have seasons of outstanding success. If you do not understand your times and seasons, you will abort the fulfilment of your destiny.

So, my encouragement to you is to find out what time it is.

God bless.