Entitled to Time

Before the pandemic closures, my husband and I were too busy. It had become a theme of our married life: If there was space to fill on the calendar, we filled it. The condition of our calendar grew more cluttered the longer we were married, because we were unable or unwilling to let go of repeated events we enjoyed and we were constantly adding new ones, not to mention having children and adding in their activities as well.

Before the pandemic closures, I dreaded Thursdays. It was one loooonnnng day where I rose early, went to work, returned home after work, tossed bookbags in the door of the house without letting any small fry exit the van, hit the road again for piano lessons, and then a karate lesson, supper somewhere, another karate lesson, and then back home again to arrive at our poor deserted house past bedtimes and exhausted from the day. 

In practicality, packing all of those activities into one day made sense, as we live approximately fifteen to twenty minutes from anything at all, so there's a good bit of gas and time consumption if we run back and forth, and my planner husband scheduled things in the most efficient and organized manner possible.

But I hated Thursdays. 

And then the pandemic hit, and we didn't go anywhere for a long while. While I won't say the pandemic was any kind of a blessing, I was glad to wake up on Thursday mornings and feel like I had time to breathe for a bit.

So, James. Up to this point -- from James 3:13 all the way to 4:12, James has been talking about humility, humbling ourselves before the Lord in various ways. In 4:13, James jumps to the other side of the spectrum: Arrogance.

"Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins" (James 4:13-17).

I've learned so many things over this past year. I am most certainly not the same person I was on March 12, 2020. One of the key things I've learned is this:

Never take the time the Lord gives you for granted. 

To put it even more strongly, I have tended to feel entitled to "my" time. I have twenty-four hours in a day. How will I fill them up? Anything that comes into my zone of time management is subject to my own manipulation.

When March 13, 2020 rolled around, I stared at the three-ring binder of lesson plans I'd made for the classroom of students at Skyline Middle School I was supposed to teach that day. I'd spent hours the afternoon before cutting out various things to use for an activity, preparing every last detail, pushing down the butterflies that inevitably erupted at the thought of teaching middle schoolers, most of whom were taller than me by at least six inches, some of whom sported facial hair. I was intimidated, and when I am intimidated, I spend extra time making sure I am prepared in case of any eventuality where I am caught off-balance.

That notebook lay still on my lap, the lesson plans for that day useless, because my twenty-four hour time management had been messed with, and no amount of manipulation would bring any kind of fruit to my efforts on this lesson (I did end up "teaching" it to my own three children a few days later, adjusted for age and circumstances). 

"You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." It sounds harsh, but it is true. 

We get sooo caught up in our circumstances, that they become our whole world, and -- as I said -- we tend to grasp those circumstances so tightly, wresting them under our own control, that we begin to expect that control, and if something happens to throw us off track, we feel things. We feel betrayal, perhaps, or anger, or helplessness, or irritation, or all of the above at one time, etc.

We feel entitled to our own time here on this planet for the lifespan we map out.

How many times have we heard of someone who has passed away "too young," and thought: That's just wrong. 

It does feel wrong; those who die young seem to have lived an unfinished life. But James says: "You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." 

How this contrasts with an eternal God Who has existed from before He even granted us the gift of time! He formulated time, order, and tempo, and He placed it in this spinning globe set in space, and it is impossible for us to think outside of time. Our minds are bound by it. 

Hosea shows us just a glimpse of this contrast in Hosea 6:3-4: "As surely as the sun rises, He [God] will appear... What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears."

The rising sun is a steady time marker; you can bank on the fact that it will show up the next morning, no matter how many clouds cover it. The mist, the dew... not so much. One of the advantages of living in the mountains is having access to some beautiful hiking trails. I've sat on a cliff ledge and looked over a valley where the mists lie low in the hollows of the land and the steady, brilliant sun rises over them, spreading heat and light. Slowly, as I watched, the mists began to disappear.

James says: "Instead you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that.'" I don't think James was giving a rote sprinkling of magical verbiage to say -- much like "Now I lay me down to sleep" prayers that are "prayers" but have little heart or meaning behind them -- "Hey, church, tack on a "if it's Your will" to the end of your prayers or your plans, and you'll find all your dreams come true and all your plans a success," etc.

He's talking about laying down the arrogance we carry that our plans trump God's purposes. He's talking about pushing aside our entitled thinking that we deserve our time. Isaiah 55:8-9 says: "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.'"

Rather than recognizing that God is the infinite Giver of this finite box of time, we pull Him into the box with us and demand that He stay within the constraints we give Him.

James was absolutely right to address our arrogance in doing this. Our time is not our own. It is His, to be done with as He requires. We can make our plans, but we do it with the recognition that every breath we take, every beat of our hearts -- those are His. We are not entitled to them. They are a gift from Him.

And when we take that perspective, humbling ourselves enough to realize that this universe does not run according to our plans and purposes, issues like the pandemic become a lot less dire. There are all sorts of things wrapped up in this: Humility, letting go, trust, acceptance, awe, selflessness...

Open hands.

None of these things, to note, come easily or naturally to me, selfish creature that I am.

Help me, Lord, to let you be God, and not me. I'm not cut out for such a job.