The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Mark 1:15 (ESV)
A Time For Everything – Timing is Everything Series – Part 4
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
When the Israelites observed Passover every year, they didn’t do it to remember the Exodus, but to partake in and experience Exodus for themselves. To live in the moment of it. It was the actualisation of the truth of the experience. They were joining in. The many festivals and feasts, which were appropriated by God, are mostly what the Bible means when it says “God’s appointed time.” It was a time to stitch the times together, in a sense, to experience what God had done, and in this way, was still doing. Hence, the Exodus, (new creation, redemption, salvation) was re-actualized each year in their lives. It was happening as they participated in the ceremonies and rituals of the feast; they were becoming one with the experience of the redemption.
We tend to view time as a linear marker of our days and the events of our lives. “Like sand through the hourglass…” But the ancient Hebrews believed time to be the rhythm of life more than a measurement of it. Time was the content of an experience that they went through or did not yet exist. For them, the content, or context, actualised the event or time.
When the writer of Ecclesiastes wrote his book, he didn’t do it from the point of view of, “there is a time for everything. Therefore, there must be a time to be born and a time to die, a time to kill and a time to heal…” He had observed the “times” of life, as in the content and context of different “times”, and then wrote, “there is a time for everything.” It’s an encouragement not around marking time in a diary or calendar for specific things, but to make the most of the ‘time’ that we are in. Time was always present tense for them.
The first words of Jesus that Mark records are, “The time is fulfilled…”
When I’m feeling particularly hopeless about the world, I can imagine an apocalypse of sorts (Zombie or other *wink*). There is enough hatred and greed and war and terror and ignorance to incite the end of all things. I don’t know what to do with all the darkness. I don’t know how to make things right. I can’t guarantee that the world is going to be safe for my children, in fact, the opposite is probably a fair perception.
BUT, on those same days, there is beauty and wonder happening too: babies are born, forgiveness mends hearts, bridges are built by grace, hope is ignited through kindness, love rises above it all. The two contrasting possibilities of darkness and light are alive within us and among us side by side. While the Kingdom of God is still on its way, at the same time, “time is fulfilled – The Kingdom of God is at hand.” Hate and love, war and peace, confusion and conviction. He is stitching together the time. Fulfilling exodus… from bondage to freedom, from lost to found, from darkness to light.
The Exodus has been fulfilled with the Resurrected Christ once and for all. And now redemption dwells within us and among us at all ‘times’, if we dare to look. Time itself is being redeemed.
Dr Alexander Shaia says that“[The book of] Mark carries the theme: how do we move through suffering.” How do we move through the unexplainable, the darkness, the bondage, the waiting, the longing, the brokenness…? The times where we are looking for “God’s perfect timing” to save the day?
Rather than waiting for when the time is up, use the time to look for the Divine IN the moment. Where you are right now is the perfect space for God to reveal his kingdom and grace to you in new and different ways.
“Eternity has been stitched into your heart” (Ecc 3:11) and it resonates with the divine, beseeching you to keep on going, to live this moment fully, in the midst of whatever time you are in. His Kingdom is here, it’s within you. Resurrection is alive inside of you; not just a memory or a moment of time in history, but taking place in your life at this very moment. Live to its rhythms.
What can you find in the waiting? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Go to Part 5 – Numbering My Days »
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