THE TIME OF OUR LIVES
by
Pastor Rick Sams
On March 9 there was a strange convergence of cosmic events:
daylight savings Sunday and the big blizzard of �08. Throw in my son�s
25th birthday to boot. That was the day time stood still along with
traffic. My own church "chilled with thousands of other
organizations by canceling services.
When I am forced to slow down I
usually ponder the meaning of "time. A NY Times article on "time
online (Mar 7, 2008) also gave cause for a pause that day. It told how
experiments in completely darkened caves distorted people�s awareness of
time. Others had their joysticks altered on their video games so that
their movement and the movements on the screen were not in sync. These
showed the brain�s tendency to twist time: one reason we so often feel we have
too little of it.
One in three Americans feels rushed all the time,
according to one survey. The faster we go to "make up time, the more
mistakes we make, which costs us time.
In 1784 Ben Franklin said "time
is money. This may not have been the first application of banking language
to time, but is one of our most memorable metaphors. We "save, spend, use,
invest and waste time.
The Bible speaks of "redeeming time
(Ephesians 5:15-16), "numbering our days aright to gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm
39:4 and 90:12), and our times being in God�s hands (Psalm 31:15). But how
many show they believe this as they change lanes every five seconds to arrive
five minutes earlier?
Society is stressed and obsessed with time as never
before. Yet it�s us in industrialized nations who lose more years from
disability and premature death due to stress-related illnesses. "We are
not stressed because we have no time, but rather, we have no time because we are
stressed. So "Haste makes waste, is true; also attributed to
Franklin. In scrambling for more time, we wind up with less. Author
Joyce Carol Oates tried to tell us this about time in her more laid-back era:
"We are either borne along by it or drowned in it. Richard Swenson MD
wrote Margin, whose thesis was we must add time buffers, "margins, to our
schedules so that we don�t always feel so rushed. If your destination or
project takes 20 minutes, allow for 40, for delays and the delight of having
"time to spare. Doesn�t stress come, not because we don�t have enough
time, but because we can�t enjoy the time we have? If we�re always harried
and hurried what�s the purpose of having more time? Is it just to fret and
fuss? Is THAT what life is about?
Jesus says it�s about living
abundantly, which is about having the time of our lives by putting more life
into our times (John 10:10).HALLOWEEN�S HISTORY
by Pastor Rick Sams
This controversial "holiday does have an inglorious history, which
may help explain why it�s so controversial even in the church. My source
is Halloween Through The Twenty Centuries by Ralph Linton, Stirling professor of
Anthropology at Yale. The name originated because that is the eve of All
Hallows (All Saints) Day created by the Catholic Church to honor all martyred
saints.
The earliest Halloween celebrations were held by the Druids, a
cultish religious order in ancient Britain, Ireland and France. These
celebrations, starting in the 2nd century BC, honored Samhain, lord of the
dead. Human victims were sacrificed at this festival held on Nov. 1,
the Celtic New Year�s Day. Black cats were put in wicker cages and burned
alive on Halloween because people believed that black cats may be witches who
had changed into cats.
Samhain was supposed to gather all the spirits of
the dead on Halloween night. Gradually fairies, goblins and witches were
added to this assembly. People practicing witchcraft, being opposed to all
the church stood for, would gather on Halloween to mock the All-Saints services
and engage in their own occultic rituals. Eventually the church charged
them with heresy.
These rites migrated to this country over the past
three centuries. The addition of American traditions have stamped their
own imprint on this day. The jack-o-lantern represents a dead man,
"Jack, sentenced to roam the earth with a lantern, a pumpkin lit with a
coal given to him by Satan. He was to continue till judgment day, because
neither heaven nor hell wanted him. This evolved into a ritual where
children carried jack-o-lanterns to ward off evil spirits.
Few people
would oppose the fun of allowing children to dress up, eat candy and have
parties, but when the fun becomes entangled with death, darkness and violence,
what are we to do? Aren�t there plenty of ways we can embrace the fun
parts of Halloween without celebrating the superstitious and satanic
parts?
On the one hand the apostle Paul encouraged us to follow his
example to "…become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might
save some ( I Corinthians 9:22). He learned the cultures of the
people he was trying to reach with the Good News of Jesus Christ so he could
better tell them about Christ�s love and life-giving ways. He also took on
some of the customs and cultural practices of those people as long as it didn�t
require him to compromise Christ and His ways and words.
On the other
hand there are those who would have us run as far away as possible from anything
questionable, even quoting the same apostle to justify their separatism: "Have
nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them
(Ephesians 5:11).
It�s our challenge to study Paul�s words and follow his
example today, having the same passion and love that Paul had for both Christ
and for people. This requires a large measure of wisdom that only comes
from drawing ever nearer to our good God, Himself.