Time, Strange Time
Ecclesiastes 3: 1 - 8

by Robert Brooks

Introduction:

This is a sermon that will consist of a series of quotes on time, being self-explanatory for the most part.  Its purpose is to convey the brevity and mystery of time.

I. Secular Views of Time
“What time is it?”  “I think about you all the time.”  “I just don’t have the time.”  Such does time permeate our speech.

1. “But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near; and yonder all before us lay vast deserts of eternity.” (Andrew Marvell)
2. “O time, thou that consumest all things with the hard teeth of the years, little by little, in slow death.”  “O time, swift depositor of created things!  How many kings, how many has thou brought low!” (Leonardo Da Vinci)
3. “Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take a breath, always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)
4. “Time, the tyrant holds sway.” (Banesh Hoffmann)
5. “Time driveth onward fast, and in a little while our lips are dumb.  . . .  And time, a maniac scattering dust.” (Tennyson)
6. “Eternity is the winged horse, infinitely fast, and time is worn-out jade; the existing individual is the driver.” (Soren Kierkegaard)
7. “The voice of time is a wail.” (Henery Ward Beecher)
8. “Time runs with an ax and hammer.  Time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time wins.” (Carl Sandburg)

II. Some Scientific Perspectives on Time
1. No longer is space and time considered apart, but reality is considered as four dimensional: length, width and height, but also durational in time.  Moreover, space is viewed as curved, since particles try to follow a straight path in a curved space, argues Steven Hawkins in A Brief History of Time.  Thus now space and time are a unity: Space-time.
2. Samuel Alexander advanced a philosophy of space/time in which he maintains that each must be always thought of together – as primordial reality. (Space, Time and Deity)
3. We have given more attention to measuring time than to anything in nature,” says Gernot Winkler, director of Time Services at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, “but time remains an abstraction, a riddle, that exists only in our minds.” (National Geographic Magazine)
4. “And physicists tracking motion inside an atomic nucleus recon in picoseconds (trillions of a second) or even femtoseconds (thousandths of a picosecond).  To grasp this, consider that there are more femtoseconds in one second than there were seconds in the past 31 million years.” (National Geographic Magazine)  Mystery!  Fathomless!

III Time in Literary thinking
1. “The bird of time has but a little way to fly – and lo! The bird is on the wing.” (The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
2. Thomas Wolfe, the North Carolina novelist, had an obsession with time.  His novel, The Web and The Rock, is filled with laments and dirges about time throughout the 695 page book:
“The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death. . . .”
“Time passing. . . passing like a leaf. . . time passing, fading like a flower. . . time passing like a river flowing. . . time passing. . . .”
“Time passing like the humming of a bee. . . time passing like the thrumming in a wood. . . time passing as cloud shadows pass above the hill flanks of the mountain meadow. . . .”
One could endlessly quote Wolf, for his works are filled with lamentations on time and death, for behind every lament stands death.
3. “Unfathomable Sea! Whose waves are years,
           Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
        Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
            Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
         Claspest the limits of mortality,
         And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
         Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
         Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
              Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea?”  (Unknown)
4. “Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all wee have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust! (Sir Walter Raleigh)


IV. Time as viewed in Holy Writ
5. Our text from Ecclesiastes does not teach a predestination, a rigid fixation.  Rather, each event has a planned time.
6. “We spend our years as a tale that is told . . . for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (Psalms 90: 9 – 10)
7. “For what is your life, it is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanish away.” (James 4: 14)
8. “…pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.” (I Peter 1: 17)
9. “So make us know how few are our days, that our minds may learn wisdom.” (Psalms 90: 12)
10. “For it is time [always] to seek the Lord.” (Hosea 10: 12)
11. “Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” (II Corinthians 6: 2)
12. Paul says  “. . .redeeming the time because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5: 16)

Conclusion
I once asked a man if he was a Christian, to which he replied, “Oh, I don’t have time for that!”
I said to him, “You will have time to die someday, sir.”
“Time passing as men pass who never will come back again. . . and leaving us, Great God, with only this. . . knowing that this earth, this time, are stranger than a dream.” (Thomas Wolfe, The Hills Beyond)
One of my favorite quotes is by Paul Tillich: “I say yes to time and to toil and to acting.  I know the infinite significance of every moment.”
“. .  . from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God.” (Psalms 90: 2)
Jesus says, “…I give unto them (believers) eternal life, and they shall never perish. . . .” 
Unbeliever, lay aside your pride, and “seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55: 6)—lest you rebel deeper and deeper and shut out God beyond hope!

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