A Helpful Tip When You Start Watching the Clock

We're late. We're stressed. We're in a relationship with one who isn't as stressed and isn't paying attention to the clock like we are.

We're waiting.

We're watching the seconds tick off the clock.

We feel our internal engine building combustible steam.

And then we explode.

Far more marriages and relationships are destroyed by clock-watching than most people can fathom. But there's not one person who hasn't experienced the fractures that come from it.

The clock has a way of separating husbands from wives, parents from children, friends from friends.

But maybe it's the way we view the clock that's the problem, not time itself?

God gave His ancient people, the Hebrews, a way to "measure time" (Exodus 12:2).

They "eyeballed" the moon at night.

Every new moon meant a new month. When they spotted the new moon, the Hebrews blew the trumpets and Israel celebrated!

But the concept of time for the Hebrews was also measured by life in the fields.

Since a "lunar" calendar of 12 lunar months is eleven days shorter than a solar year (the earth's orbit around the sun) of 12 solar months. the Hebrew priests would go out into the farmers' fields and feel the ground's temperature, smell the air for pollen freshness, and see the buds (or lack thereof) on the fruit trees and grain stems.

Time touched the senses of the ancients.

Every two or three years the Hebrew priests would "add" another lunar month based upon their feeling that the planting and harvest times had shifted too far from their seasons.

The Hebrews walked with time by sensing and supporting life not by watching and worshipping clocks.

The Hebrews felt time pass.

They felt time's rhythms, sensed its pleasures, experienced it like a heartbeat, measuring time like they gauged another's health; they listened to the heartbeat, they felt the pulse, and they sensed the breathing.

Time to the Hebrews was a living thing. 

But the Romans under Julius Caesar took time and made it mechanical, automated, and - lifeless. 

Western Civilization, including America, followed Rome.

Now, rather than experiencing time with the senses, feeling its rhythm, and viewing the clock as a reflection of one's life, we Americans see the clock as something separate from life, a dictator that demands devotion, with punishment for the person who pays no attention to time.

We've lost our sense of living in the present because we keep looking to the future. 

Here's the helpful tip about clock-watching:

Next time the person you love is late, remember that life is more important than a Roman clock, for time is to be felt, sensed, and experienced like life itself.

If my dedication to a clock is more important than my devotion to life, then maybe the problem is my view of time.

Time should be measured by lives blossoming rather than by clocks ticking.