Time, then, is also a gift we receive from God and, like many gifts, we mostly take it for granted. Like gravity, time is simply reality as the seconds continue to tick by. When we do notice it, it is often because we notice a lack of time – we resent the speed at which good things pass; we are anxious about having enough time to do the things we need to do; we worry about wasting time and saving time and spending time. But the truth is that a day is a day is a day, no matter who or where or how you are. There is, in fact, no wasting or saving or spending time. Time passes no matter what we do or don’t do and God’s work unfolds around us and within us.

This is not, generally speaking, our orientation to time. We are expected to manage our time, making the most of each moment and proving ourselves in control of our lives. Time, after all, is money. Time is a limited resource. Somehow, we are expected to simultaneously regret the passing of time while also hurrying on to the next thing. In the midst of all this, it can be difficult to remember that, in fact, time is not ours to control. We live in God’s time, created and gifted to us by the Source of all we have and all we are. Our time, and all time, is in God’s hands and is in service to God, not us.

In the Gospel according to Mark (4:26-29), Jesus offers this parable:

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.

This process — planting, waiting, watching, and finally, harvesting — unfolds in time and requires discernment on the part of the farmer to understand when these various steps need to take place. Neither delaying nor rushing will do any good. No steps can be skipped. The time it will take is, simply, the time it will take, and so the farmer must align their activities according to God’s purposes in God’s time. Participation in the kingdom, it seems, involves an awful lot of time and patience which are two things that often seem to be in short supply. This is where Advent comes in.

Advent calls us to enter into a season of deliberate, holy waiting. We count the weeks and days to Christmas but resist the urge to jump ahead to the festivities, focusing instead on the in-between time – waiting not just for Christmas but for the unfolding of the kingdom of God. Like the farmer in Jesus’ parable, we wait and watch for the ripening grain, signs of God at work in the world around us and an invitation to us to join in the harvest.

Christmas will come soon enough. There is no rushing it nor delaying it. We can neither waste the time nor save the time between now and then for the time will pass no matter what we do. So accept the Advent invitation to live, right now, in God’s time, attentive to the kingdom that Jesus proclaims is already near.

The Venerable Rhonda Waters is Incumbent of St. Helen’s, Ottawa

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This cycle of the liturgical year has been a particular blessing this year, when so many other markers of time have been disrupted. Days and weeks have a way of blurring together without the rhythms of commutes and coffee shop runs, lunch dates and dinner parties, weekends away and summer vacations, choir rehearsals, sports practices, and so on. 

Through it all, the liturgical year has kept me grounded in time and focused on eternity.

Our worship and community life left our buildings in Lent 2020, which made it the last liturgical season that we didn’t plan with an eye to the pandemic. Our parish abandoned the interactive prayer stations we were using each Sunday. The Lenten Quiet Day and Holy Week service plans – all tossed out and reimagined in something of an adrenaline rush. In the midst of that madness, Lent continued.  Day by day and week by week, we were called to turn back to God; to remember that God is where all our strength and all our hope actually rests.  Our whole lives became something of a Lenten fast, whether we wanted them to or not.  

When Easter came, it felt like Lent had lasted twice its usual 40 days but that Easter couldn’t possibly come, either.  And yet, Easter came so we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus and declared death defeated even in the face of the pandemic…and we kept celebrating for 50 days, insisting on a truth that is bigger and more powerful than any force on earth.  

We rejoiced at the coming of the Spirit on Pentecost and observed the long growing Green season. We welcomed the promises of Advent and the joy of Christ’s birth at Christmas and the wonder of God’s self-revelation in Epiphany.  

And now we’re back (or we will be by the time you read this). A full liturgical cycle observed during a pandemic.  We learned that our needs – for repentance, sorrow, and resurrection; for peace and power and sustenance; for hope and expectation; for God-with-us and God-around-us – our needs don’t change and God’s faithfulness in meeting them doesn’t change.  

As much as I’m dreading the coming COVID anniversaries (and do be gentle with yourselves as those weeks approach), I can also feel the rhythm of faith drawing me towards a season of simplicity and self-reflection.  I am ready to be reminded that I am only human, a sinner in need of saving and a beloved child of God. I am ready to lay the mess that is me and the mess that is our world at the foot of the cross and pray: Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

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