Giving Up the Time-god

One moment doing something you love changes everything. Imagine living each day with such moments interspersed, everywhere. Love!

Coveting time is the wrong way to joy. Such a thing makes joy elusive. Surrendering your time, on the other hand, is an irony; the way to true freedom.

There was a time only relatively recently where I maximised my time to such a degree that time became a god. I became selfish to time, only allowing those activities into my schedule which were productive, efficient, and effective. I had become blind in my sin—to prefer efficiency over love; productivity over fellowship; tasks over relationships.

I had become deluded, and only my unconscious self knew. I presented as an inauthentic person, at least as it came to time. I just didn’t have any tolerance for ‘waste’, not appreciating the freedom in so-called waste. Getting to know people, and dealing with their superficiality, was a thing I just didn’t have time for. As it happened, I couldn’t have the richness of relationships either. I actually needed both.

Only now do I recognise how I floundered in isolation; that my disconnection was the end of me. I squirrelled away the hours in order to obey God, but in going too far I disobeyed and suffered as a result. I became a smaller version of me.

Of recent I’ve learned the magnanimous joy of throwing myself into relationships.

As a result God has released me from the grip of the time-god. No longer do I plan for and anticipate the next free day or free hour. God is in charge of my time, as he has given me charge over my passion in relating with people.

Giving up the time-god has been my greatest recent learning and it has opened my world up to possibilities previously unconceived.

Now there is a thing that wells up like a spring within my heart; fear for relating with people has gone. My interactions are seasoned with passion; an enthusiasm which is hardly of me at all, but the energy of God.

Giving up the time-god may just be—through the process of hindsight, in years to come—the biggest single achievement that the Spirit of God has facilitated through me so far as transformation is concerned. It’s nothing short of a miracle; ask my wife!

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Giving up the time-god, in our busy worlds, where we want so much control over our time, could ironically be the cherished secret to true freedom. That’s what I’ve found.

We have to be careful in making the most use of time that we don’t shut people out and become selfish. Love makes way for efficiency, and life for achievement. But that is not life at all. True life is about people and being involved in the lives of others.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.