September. It is autumn in North Carolina though the leaves are just beginning to turn. Our days now are cooler, our nights almost chilly. Afternoon sunlight is taking on a richer, fuller color. 

Memories arise of starting the school year. Memories nearly seventy years old but vivid. New shirts and pants from Sears, new and shiny shoes, the fresh smell of a new box of crayons. The excitement of having a new teacher, of seeing old friends, maybe making new ones.  

“To everything,” Ecclesiastes tells us, “there is a season. And a time to every purpose under the sun.” A time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to scatter, a time to gather, a time to mourn, a time to dance.

The rhythm and balance of those words speak deeply to our hearts. They speak of the pace of life, of our freedoms and limits. They remind us that we cannot do everything and that it would not be right for us humans to do everything. Even—no, especially—in ministry, where so much is vital, so much urgent, we must measure our efforts prayerfully within the bounds of time.  

But there is another, less famous, passage in Ecclesiastes: “God has made everything appropriate to its time, but has put the timeless into our hearts.”  

“The timeless.” We are reminded that God is outside of, beyond time. His Kingdom is beyond time. We cannot imagine being outside of time – not having a “then” and a “now,” not having a “before” and “after.” 

And yet, we can glimpse it. Deep in our hearts, where God has placed it, is the timeless. We encounter it when we are deeply involved in something we love—a craft, an art, a book. We encounter it even more fully when we are with a person we love—conversing, reminiscing, laughing. “Where did the time go?” we ask, surprised, looking up at the clock.  

More deeply still, we experience it in prayer—in adoration, in contemplation, time vanishes. We experience it during Mass, where our prayer is not simply a two-thousand-year-old memory but our active participation in the death and resurrection of our Lord, which is always now. Our Mass and every other Mass that ever was or ever will be are happening at the same time.  

Prayer knows no bounds of time. We can pray for the “past,” and we can pray for things in the “future.” Because, in prayer, there is no past or future. We are with God, outside of time, in the infinite, the eternal.  

But from those moments, those glimpses of infinity, we return to our world of time. Time, like the physical world around us, is a gift. It binds us, but it also shelters us from the overwhelming presence of God – our frail souls can stand only a measured amount of beauty, truth, freedom, and power. Otherwise, we would burst. That is why the Old Testament taught us that we could not see the face of God and live.   

Through those glimpses, God is preparing us. Little by little, we grow to realize the timelessness He has planted in our hearts. Little by little, those timeless moments increase. Oddly enough, the effect of this is not that we value this world less—we appreciate it more, treasuring every hour, every moment: sunlight glowing on a brick wall, a breeze rustling in the leaves, a bee hovering over a flower.  

But we are being trained. Guided and trained. 

And we will, someday, see the face of God and live.  

Copyright 2022, Arthur Powers