The Sylvr Pen

“You put a letter to yourself in a time capsule twenty years ago. What does it say?”

So prods the writing prompt I “happen on” in this book I picked up at Barnes and Noble.

The prompt, of course, intends to ignite imaginative writing: fiction, or a “real life” account of two decades past (which also, let’s face it, would undoubtedly prove at least part fiction).

I consider what such a letter might say, and suddenly it hits me: I did this!

Several posts back, didn’t I say my journaling is like letters to my future self? So aren’t those battered journals, all lined up in rows stuffed into my old 1950’s file cabinet, actually time capsules?

I must still have the one from twenty years ago, I muse. Hmm, that would be late 1995/early ’96…

So I go digging in my sort-of organized journal archives (sort-of un-organized, too, but, well, I’m able to locate it).

And though the entries are sparse during that hectic, overloaded era, and drop off entirely by January 12, what theme do I encounter, right off, but Time Use! (And no, I don’t journal about this everyday!)

This entry strikes me as especially interesting, and, well, timely—and worth sharing here, in light of my last two posts, which pondered that subject. So, here’s what my “time capsule letter to myself” said:

[Good to note first: At the date of the writing, we’d recently moved, were buried in remodeling—to the extent of gutting the walls—and expecting extended family for Christmas, and, oh, yes, my son was a college-bound high school senior and we were home schooling.]

11-30-95. I rise early, troubled. Awakened by a nagging list of “things-I-gotta-do,” I am bothered by how the demands of material life in this present world are butting in and crowding out the abundance that is mine in Christ.

In the past few days, since Thanksgiving, I have “gotten things accomplished.” I have ordered half the Christmas presents, helped D___ get his room primed and painted…, gone over AP [advanced placement] materials and developed with him somewhat of a strategy for attacking the courses and preparing for the exams. I have sorted through and organized the files of house remodeling info and ideas, straightened out problems about the College Board never having sent D’s SAT scores to [his college of choice], and done perhaps a host of other things that I can’t even bring immediately to mind right now.

Yet the more I’ve done, the more my mental list of things I still haven’t done seems to have grown, only to nag me more loudly and relentlessly.

What’s going on?! And what to do about it?

It seems akin to the frantic financial struggle of a person trying to meet bills and payments and provide for needs without putting into action the principle of tithing—and only becoming more and more convinced by the financial demands that (s)he can’t afford to tithe—when the truth is that (s)he can’t afford not to… for the money is God’s, and not trusting Him with His own money is not only robbery [Mal 3:8] but also presumptuous trust in self more than Him.

Likewise I need to see time as God’s possession.

Am I even “tithing” my time when I get so entangled in the to-do lists and busy activities?

In all honesty, no. All time belongs to God, as does all wealth, and how foolish I am to try to grab it all for my needs and duties instead of trusting Him to supply the time I need just as he does the material needs, if I will but take the step of faith that makes time for Him the priority.

At some point after that, I remember, I did the math, figured what fraction of my time, or maybe even my waking time, I relegated to God. And it was interesting, what I discovered. Now where could I dig to find that time capsule…?

~~~~~

As it turns out, there’s time, and there’s time, chronos, and kairos.

That’s something I was failing to take into account when I published that last post… the first time (heh). As a result, the more I strove diligently to use chronos time effectively, the more disastrous grew the day, until I realized my failure to use kairos time. Here’s what I was missing:

kairos: 

A. a fixed and definite time, the time when things are brought to crisis, the decisive epoch waited for

B. opportune or seasonable time

C. the right time…”

chronos:

I. time either long or short.

a space of time (in general, and thus properly distinguished from [kairos], which designates a fixed or special occasion; …”

[Outline of biblical usage and explanation of kairos (Strong’s #G2540), and chronos (#G5550): (from which we get chronological, chronometer, etc.) courtesy Blue Letter Bible]

In other words, chronos is what we deal with when we set the timer to so many minutes, count the days or hours that are passing, or speak of happenings taking place during the same time period.

But kairos is what Ephesians 5:16 and Colossians 4:5-6 are talking about, instructing believers to seize the opportune time. It’s what verses like John 7:8 and Matthew 26:18 use to indicate God’s set time for a particular event, such as Christ’s death on the cross.

My mind didn’t have the labels for these two varieties of time, at the time. I only came upon them later in this wise post at Flowing Faith. But I knew I was getting it wrong as the tumbled, jumbled thoughts and feelings increased, and finally I went to my blog and deleted that post I’d spent over an hour trying to illustrate with photos that had kept refusing to come out well. Yes, chucked it in “trash.” (I retrieved it later, as you can see—but at the right (kairos) time, God’s time.)

It’s all fine and good to consider the minutes I have, to set timers and use big fat detailed planners to keep the days and hours and seconds in some kind of order and to remember all the commitments I maybe shouldn’t have made but did. But that chronos planning is secondary.

God’s kairos time is the opportune time, the specific moment or moments when He will be actively at work with us in the specific purpose He has for it. Or, rather, maybe it’s the other way ’round: we will then be cooperating with His working at that time.

That morning I had neglected a kairos appointment: for prayer and communion with Him. Instead I went charging into trying humanly to use the hours and minutes of fleeting chronos time before they burned up in the sunlight. In so doing, I actually wasted those minutes.

This experience gives new meaning to Ecclesiastes 3:1’s “There is a … time to every purpose under heaven.” God’s purposes happen according to God’s time planning, no matter how much we try to wrestle them into our planner schedules. And when it comes to planners and calendars, one of the most red-letter kairos appointments we need to write in–and keep!–are those times aside with Him in prayer.

Also, flashing back through my mind come a pair of quotes I heard several years ago, whose truth I got to witness personally as part of prayer backup for a local short-term missions team:

The [Five Minute Friday] prompt word is “time.”

Oh, a-ho! Time…. Time… I could write for weeks about time. I could write volumes. A whole encyclopedia’s worth… Time has been on my mind. Time was on my mind when I first got up.

It was only 4:14 when I crawled out of bed, rather surreptitiously. Oh, yes, I had to make a bathroom call, but I planned, very certainly, very determinedly, to stay up and awake and seize the moment, actually the next two hours. To spend the next two luscious hours writing, writing, and doing all things writing, as I chose, and possibly even undisturbed.

Writing is one of the things I never “found” enough time for through my life.

Writing is something I put aside for another, a later, time, in deference to other more pressing matters.

Not that I never wrote. I scrolled out a whole 13 chapter book during that time period of my life. But other things were primary, and writely so (that was an auto-error, which I hadn’t intended, but this is free-write Friday when you don’t fix errors like that, and I don’t think it was truly an error, just a Freudian slip that shows how much writing is taking its come-back place in me…) But you can only do so much in an hour, a day, a week, and my days and weeks had “promises to keep, and miles to go before I…” really let out all stops to dedicate, really dedicate, solid blocks of time uninterrupted to writing and all that goes with it, builds it, supports it, enriches it…

But now…!

Is not now the time?

“But how much time do you have left?” you might ask. “You’re no spring chick, you know.”

Or maybe you might not ask it, because you know you have to balance small time allotments for this (or some other personal passion) with massive other, and important, demands on your energy and hours. Maybe only the enemy of my soul would ask a question like that.

But there is a simple answer: “As much time (and strength, and ability) as God keeps giving me.” And right at this time He keeps giving me amazing amounts of all that and more…

“Time is up!” (the buzzer buzzed) But only for Five Minute Friday!

May you have a good. time. this time-filled new year!

~~~~~

Linked to Five Minute Friday

[She suggested I send something to the Chicken Soup people about gratitude. They had extended their deadline to January 15. I declined, saying I was no longer interested in seeking commercial publication. But I didn’t consult God. Since then vague feelings have kept poking me, telling me I should relent and send. So okay, I shall. But first I want to share with you, my online readers, the edited repost below I’ve decided to offer.]

“[Be] …giving thanks always for all things…” -Ephesians 5:20.

I’d heard it years before: “If you want to change your attitude, start with gratitude.” Probably in an Al Anon meeting, while laboriously clawing my way out of a desperate pit of overwhelming circumstances and deep depression brought on by alcoholism too near me for comfort. I’d responded by starting to notice and give thanks for the pleasing and enjoyable in the midst of the miserable. And it had definitely helped.

But it’s absurd to thank God for something you don’t like!  Isn’t it?

Yet that’s what this seminar speaker was telling us to do. She was pointing out that though 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to thank God in all things, Ephesians 5:20 says give thanks for all things.

She was citing an example from her own life: how she’d been thanking God for her beloved boyfriend repeatedly two-timing her! Even though it was causing her deep pain.

Well, I could see good reason for gratitude in her case—at least for finding out what this guy was like before she got tied up permanently with him! But love being blind, I guess she didn’t see it. So her prayer of thanks for this “bad” thing was wiser than she was, at this moment.

I didn’t know then that my own similar thanksgiving would turn out wiser than my human feelings, too. But for some mysterious reason, as I sat listening, I purposed to put the concept she was talking about into practice.

Opportunity arose in quick order…

Four hours of driving. Quiet rural roads and crowded superhighways. We’d returned, refreshed, my toddler son and I, from visiting my parents. Now the long driveway that wound among the trees welcomed us back to “the little house between two highways” that we’d been calling home for six months.

Just six months.

I’d agreed to a six-month, then month-to-month, lease, because finding any affordable rental had seemed downright impossible, and this little cottage had perfectly answered my prayer for shelter.

The house wouldn’t even have been available except the owner had just put the property up for sale and wanted this building on it unoccupied by the settlement date. The couple then living there with their little daughter did not like that uncertainty after renting for two or three years, and had decided it was time to press ahead and buy their own place.

But I’d figured (naively?) that I could trust God to keep such a Godsend available for us after the six months expired.

Well, now they had. Expired. Exactly. And what did I see, as I rounded the curve, but men clambering around with surveyor’s instruments!

“Oh, Lord, no,” I groaned. “Please, no.”

Sighing, I pulled up beside the cottage, climbed out of the car, unbelted my little one, and led him into the house. Meanwhile, that seminar kept flashing through my mind, along with my commitment to give thanks for all things, even things like this.

Inside, a moment later, reluctantly I did it: “All right, Lord,” I said. “Thank You! I thank You that surveyors are out there, which means this place is sold! I don’t like this at all!” (as my tone of voice made clear). “But thank You anyway. Thank You!”

I hadn’t learned yet that scripture also says to be grateful. And I certainly wasn’t. I didn’t feel any sense of gratitude. I felt whacked in the face! I felt deflated, frustrated, defeated. But I said, “Thank You” anyway, at least.

I waited for the notice, the bad news. A letter. Something.

Nothing came. That week, or the next, or the next.

A knock on the door finally did one evening, right while I was navigating the challenge of cutting the hair on a constantly moving three-year-old’s head, blond locks scattered everywhere in the disheveled livingroom.

Leaving the safety chain hooked, I inched open the door enough to see the lanky man who introduced himself as my new landlord-to-be. He assured me that once his purchase was finalized, I’d be able to continue renting, although no other non-commercial renters would be allowed to lease after me. And of course my rental payment would go up. (Of course, I thought grimly.) He peered through the crack in the doorway to glimpse what he’d bought here, but seeing my mess and occupation, he graciously apologized for “discombobulating” me, and backed away to his car in the shadows.

Another sigh. I could thank God that this man wasn’t going to boot us out. But could I afford any raise in rent? I was really scraping, and taking on side jobs, to pay the bills already.

So I waited for expected changes, notices, a letter, a phone call, whatever.

Nothing.

I thanked God now more authentically—and often. And by this developing practice I came to rest more and more easy in my situation.

Nearly two years passed since I’d moved in! Same rent rate, and nothing happening to our little surrounding woods.  And by now I was packing up to move out and move on anyway.

So I was talking with my landlady on the phone, and she started to complain.

If only she hadn’t granted this buyer his two requested extensions! Right afterwards, both times, another buyer had appeared, offering full asking price with no contingencies—and with the quickest possible closing!

I caught my breath! And silently thanked God again—with genuine gratitude this time! Thanked Him for the buyer the surveying activity had announced, eighteen months before—not the buyer that pleased my landlady most, but the perfect one for me!

Things come full circle, and after more years passed I ended up speaking at women’s seminars myself. And when the subject of gratitude rolled around… well, I think you can guess what kind of advice I gave my listeners.

~~~~~

This month Dawn at Random Journal Day initiated the option for journal keepers or bloggers to respond to any of 20 prompts. Some appear below in green print. [the rest here] Even if you don’t journal or blog, you might want to give these prompts a ponder. They just might get your thinking churning and help heat up the January-cold room of your mind.) Meanwhile, brick red print below indicates content from my January 2^nd journal entry (edited somewhat). What’s uncanny is how much of it responded unknowingly to her prompts before I read them!

(How would you respond to each green question or quote that follows?)

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.” -T.S.Eliot

I’ve started my new journal on the second day of this year rather than the first.

[On the first I got hit slam bang with a big black funk, evidently from organizing my photographic past, and that kind of froze up my forward thoughts along with the ink in my pen. (Just kidding, but boy is it cold out there now!)]

But the late start’s good in a way. That first day seemed to belong with “the old,” the emotional past, in so many ways. The second throbbed with eagerness, stretching away from that past to this year’s future. 

Tis the season to…

It’s good to have a point we call “new” each year.

January First in its winter frozenness might seem an odd time for it, but it is a useful and usually opportune seasonal spot in which to come aside for a few moments, or hours, even a day or two if we get a timely weekend for it, and consider what we might want to build into the next earth year, to gain and to live.

One person I plan to invest in this year:

My thoughts lately have been of my need to be kind—especially to myself! Perhaps because a song has been echoing daily in my head.

The song on repeat in my head.

This one, by Andrew Peterson. If you listen you will hear the repeating “Be kind to yourself…” leading up in the refrain to what hits home for me with the punch line, “You’ve got to learn to love your enemies, too”!

Sometimes I can be one of my own worst enemies, I know.

I often treat myself most unkindly. I tend to be harder on, more demanding and judgmental toward, myself, than toward other people who make the same blunders or slips. I tend to work far harder to support and further others’ dreams and goals and their becoming the beautiful unique shining being God designed them to be than I do for myself.

Unselfishness is good, as is considering others more important than yourself, but what I’m talking about here is not just that. It seems more like timidity brought about by bullies, but I’m not sure who have been this sort of bullies recently in my life. It seems it might be me, at least in part—though I don’t know why this should be…

So I see I have already responded to Dawn’s journaling prompt,

My One Word for this year:

Kind. In my journal is a printout of the word’s definition, harvested from our big heavy unabridged Merriam-Webster’s I lugged upstairs to copy on my computer at my comfortable payer-place table. 

Is all that a little too selfish? Would I want to let the world know the one word that I’m thinking of choosing for 2016, and that I mean primarily kindness toward myself? I have my misgivings.

So I asked God for His perspective.

Husband wanted to listen to another Paris Reidhead sermon on Sonday, as we’d done a couple other times, and knowing it was my turn to pick the message, (without a clue as to what any were about), I prayed for God to lead me to exactly what I most needed to hear.

Quite randomly, almost blindly, I chose… [#34 on the website list].

What Paris Reidhead said in a sermon on “The Greatest Commandment” (Mt. 22:37-39) about the definition and importance of proper self love brought tears to my eyes, and wonder to my heart at how God responds in two-way conversation to our seeking questions:

[Paraphrased from notes I took]:

Sin is the decision and purpose to fulfill one’s own selfish desires, to please ourselves primarily, even at others’ expense: “I will do what I want to do. I set my will to please myself (rather than God). I will decide how to be happy, what I will do with my time, my life, my body…”

To love God is not the natural man’s tendency.

At this point I began to feel uncomfortable about choosing kindness to myself (“too”) as my aim for 2016. Wouldn’t that be considered selfish? Yet even as I began to squirm, he went on to talk about love, including the importance and definition of proper self love: 

The essence of love is to desire the best for someone—their highest good, well-being, fulfillment, blessedness, happiness, fairness and right treatment. Proper self love desires the same thing. We should want our own highest good, fulfillment of what God made us to be, blessedness, happiness, etc. but not at another person’s expense. The greatest commandment’s second part says, “Love your neighbor as yourself…”

So…

I resolve…

to be kind… to myself, too.

~~~~~~~

Linked to Random Journal Day