Time Marches On

Friday 12/21/18 4:30 AM

I think about the slow, inexorable march of time quite frequently. Today is winter solstice, my favorite day of the year, marking the southernmost declination of the sun due to the tilt of the earth on its axis. Even though the earth is hurtling through space at over sixty-six thousand miles per hour, it takes a year to circumnavigate the sun. Each time I experience, or hear about, an earthquake I think of the imperceptible movement of tectonic plates, moving at about the same rate my fingernails grow, that, over time move entire continents thousands of miles and raise mountain ranges to heights of thousands of feet. The fields of astronomy and geology illustrate what I believe to be a universal truth that spans multiple disciplines of science, and ultimately, human life as well. In the short term there seems to be no change at all but, given time, the processes of nature effect great change.

I think God works the same way in people’s lives. I am currently halfway through my forty-second year of teaching, nearing the end of my teaching career. As I have progressed through my career there has been an unchanging routine: get up, exercise, spend time reflecting on God and my life, eat breakfast, shower, go to school, teach my classes, prepare for the next day, come home to spend time with family over dinner, correct papers, go to bed, … repeat. Of course, over the years my life has changed dramatically. I got married, had children, went back to school to get a higher degree, raised my children, interacted with friends, saw my children mature and leave home to start their own lives, became a grandfather ten times over, … and so on. Each day seemed the same but, over time, there has been great change.

I live in a culture that is fast-paced and changing rapidly. We have grown accustomed to having immediate results to problems and have little patience for anything that requires time. If people start a job, there are few who are willing to start at the ground floor and work their way up. They expect a six-figure salary with huge responsibilities from the beginning and quickly become disillusioned when that doesn’t happen. Relationships suffer because we expect deep interpersonal relationships without doing any of the hard work of working through the stresses and messes that are inevitable in any relationship. We are quick to move on to a different person rather than weathering the storm and coming out stronger because of it.

Abraham Joshua Heschel addresses this issue in his book Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion. He writes, “Many of us are willing to embark upon any adventure, except to go into stillness and to wait, to place all the wealth of wisdom in the secrecy of the soil, to sow our own soul for a seed in that tract of land allocated to every life which we call time - and to let the soul grow beyond itself. Faith is the fruit of a seed planted in the depth of a lifetime.”

I have a tendency to want to see results of my efforts immediately. Unfortunately, in teaching, as in most other occupations, that kind of immediate result is seldom achieved. The changes that occur in the lives of my students, and in my life as their teacher, only occur slowly with the passing of time. My effectiveness as a teacher, or as a parent or grandparent, can seldom be seen in the short term, it requires a lifetime of consistent, usually boring, effort. It is only by being faithful in the day-to-day routines of life that I can bring about the changes in my own life, in the lives of my students, and in the lives of those I love. Lord, grant me patience to wait and the persistence to persevere through the boring routines of life.