Dear Fellow Disciples of Jesus,
   I wish you and your family a Happy New Year!  A new year reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that time continues to tick on.  We make resolutions about how we will be different "this time around."  Time, time - it is an important subject, an unavoidable dimension of the universe.
   I commend to you these reflections on time, which I've gleaned from an article,  Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, by Dr. Dorothy C. Bass at Valparaise University.  I hope that they will be a helpful piece for you as you consider your use of God's gift of time.
   "Over the centuries, Christian people have inherited and invented practices that embody Christian beliefs regarding time and offer wise guidance for living well within it.  These practices give a distinctive shape to the rhythms of a human life."
   Dr. Bass identifies 3 Christian practices.  "First, receive each day as the day God has made.  Days keep us humble.  We don't get up in the morning to get the world turning again.  Rather, we and our work is in the hands of God.  God is out growing the crops before the farmer is up, and knitting together the wound before the clinic opens; when we awake, we join in a process that is already taking place without us.
   "Second is the practice of keeping sabbath.  Resting and worshiping on one day in seven affirms that God, not we, created and run the universe, that God does not intend unremitting labor from anyone, and enables us to celebrate together God's victory over death and the breaking into history of the new creation.
  "The third is the practice of living in the Christian story through the Christian liturgical year.  The patterns of the year connect the now - the vulnerable present in which we mortals live - to the foundational stories of our faith.   Again and again, God meets us here, receiving our experience, embracing it, and giving it back renewed, e.g. when death has come near, the week of our Lord's suffering and death speaks with added power.
  "Christian practices do not offer more time.  Rather, they form us into people who see the world differently because the time in which we dwell tells the truth about ourselves, the world, and God.  When we remember that this day is the day that God has made, a day in which to remember the forgiveness and share the love of Christ, we go out into that day not with more time, but more attuned to the presence of God and the needs of our neighbors within the time that we do have.  Similarly, the point of sabbath is not just to take a break.  The point is to be changed - to become a people that cherishes the Creation as God's good gift, opposes slavery in all its forms, and lives in the knowledge that life is stronger than death.  Likewise, the point of the yearly rhythm is to be changed.
  "Living these practices can foster a difference that permits faithful people to practice the freedom with which Christ has set us free, and to expand our capacity to understand ourselves and the world as belonging not to Father Time with his pocket watch or digital readout, but to God the Creator and Lord of all that is.   
  God bless you as you practice your faith in the gift of time
      In Jesus' Joy, Peace, and Hope,