JUST A MOMENT

Beginning at the moment of conception, life is a collection of moments until the moment of death. In reality life is short but we live as though we will live forever on this planet we call Earth. Humanity will live an eternity in one of two places, eternity in the Abyss or eternity with God. Someone once asked me where Heaven was. I told Heaven is where God is. They asked where hell is. I told them where God ain’t.

Many moments ago, my maintenance foreman asked, “Do you know why wars were fought with young men?” I told him that I ready never thought about it. He said, “Because old men won’t. Young men are ten feet tall, bullet proof, and will kill the enemy. Old men know mortality, hurt, and death.”

Precious, few, and temporal are the moments we share together in life. We build houses, families, communities, cities, businesses, and government thinking they will last forever.

Think about the cost of the average home and the thirty plus year mortgage. That house will need repair long before the mortgage is paid. Children will grow and leave home before the last house payment is paid in full. The new vehicle parked in the drive will be in the repair shop before the last payment is due. Children, house, vehicle, and neighborhood will become moments of the past. Everything will be out of date and undergo change due to the deterioration of time.

Someone mentioned in Discipleship class at church Sunday night that the world was nothing like the one we all grew up in. That truism is the same for each generation. Moments fleeing away metamorphizing by capturing the old and newfangled freshness filling the air. After a while contemporary replaces the traditional and eventually the contemporary becomes the traditional creating cycles of momentary accomplishment.

God created us with eternity in our hearts. There was a song we sang when I pastored at Brierfield Baptist Church that reminded me of our temporary time on earth. Some of the words were, “This world is not my home I am just passing through.” We are just passing through, but the WORLD tries to convince people that the here and now is it. The here and now will one day be “somewhere beyond the blue” cause we’re a just passing through.

God is without beginning or end. Special and divine moments fill our being. Momma used to teach us that things will get better. Moments would get worse in life, but the moments of pain and sorrow will one day pass. Looking at scars remind that the hurt that was once severe is now gone. It provides minute reminders that most pain will subside with time. Heartaches though austere are transient, death though cruel is transitory, and sickness though devastating is ephemeral.

The good news is:

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. II Corinthians 4:17-18 KJV

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TIME

 The gadgets that humanity has at its disposal have always shaped society and intellectualism.  Overnight luxuries become necessities.  If society is not careful, gadgets become idols determining what and how we worship.

Take the invention of the clock.  Most of us live by the clock.  A clock wakes us from our sleep.  Our sleep time started by looking at a clock to see the time of night to analyze the proper hours of sleep we would need for proper rest.  We needed to rest because we start work by punching a timecard in a time clock.

During that time of work, clocks determine our breaks dividing our work time into strategic intervals of rest and time to refuel our bodies.  We leave work by looking at a clock and once again punching a time clock.

We race home looking at the clock to determine what time to prepare supper.  Once food has been prepped for cooking, we use the clock to determine how long each dish will have to cook.  This determines what time we will enjoy a meal and how much time we have to enjoy the remaining time doing homework, watching TV, and other pertinent things before time to go to bed.  It makes me wonder how humanity, especially Americans, operates without a clock. 

Speaking of a time clock, ABC Rail in Calera, Alabama had an incident where men were in line waiting to clock out, which was against company policy and considered stealing.  As a supervisor approached to give a royal chewing to the time stealing employees, a stealing, quick thinking employee confronted him by saying, “Looks like a company as big as ABC Rail could have two clocks that had the same time.”  The supervisor turned and walked away, outsmarted, at least until the next time.

Another question is what was the necessity that prompted someone to invent a clock?

Well, it was the church so people could look at them during preaching.  It was invented to see how much more time it would take the preacher to finish his sermon after saying, “Now in closing” when he really means I have five more minutes to preach because it is not after twelve yet.  No, I am kidding.  However, the Catholic Church at the Pope insistence initiated the invention.

Reading Clarence P. McClelland’s book, Quotations Marks and Exclamation Points (The Lakeside Press 1935) reminded me of the clock’s origin.  You know necessity is the mother of invention.  McClelland writes, “Lewis Munford in his fascinating book The Technics of Civilization tells us that the first manifestation of the machine age was in the regular measurement of time and that the clock, and not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age.  He shows how the new mechanical conception of time arose largely out of the routine of the monasteries, particular the Benedictine monasteries.  It was in the seventh century that the Pope decreed that the bells of the monasteries should ring seven times in twenty-four hours for devotions.  Some means of keeping count of these punctuation marks in the day and ensuring their regular repetition became necessary.  This led ultimately to the invention of the mechanical clock which in the thirteenth century got out of the monasteries into the cities and brought a new regularity into the life of the workman and the merchant.”

Munford says, “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.  The clock, moreover, served as a model for many other kinds of mechanical works, and the analysis of the motion that accompanied the perfection of the clock with the various types of gearing and transmission that were elaborated, contributed to the success of quite different kinds of a machine.”

Did you notice some important there?  “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.”  Spiritual things gave way to mechanical things.  Humanity slowly moved from God centered thinking to mechanical thinking.

When Dr. McClelland wrote his book, the Great Depression was six years prior.  That great catastrophe came after a period of great inventions and a frame of mind that technology could save humanity.  It is pre-World War II.

There are those that say that new technology (smart phones, smart watches, iPad, etc.) are the new gods that people have to have to survive.  The god of technology will save humanity.  I will say that I have been in some worship services and funerals where a cell phone captured more attention than a sermon point.  I have even heard some folks, not necessarily young people, who say they cannot live without a cell phone, computer, etc.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (I John 2:15-17 KJV).

What would Munford think today?  Well, it is time to go!

Pivotal Moments

You and I measure time by events.  The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us of that in Chapter three.  We have those pivotal moments that mark our living in births, deaths, holidays, special events, and tragedies.

Growing up daddy would say on the day you were born icicles were hanging off the house a foot long and we buried your momma’s Grandmoe Crumpton the day before you were born.

One of those pivotal moments came in October 1986.  Momma heard that I would be preaching at the Maplesville Baptist Church.

Mom had worked in the veneer mill in Maplesville thirty-five years earlier.  She wanted to go with me in hope of renewing some old acquaintances.  I hoped that she wanted to hear me preach, but she wanted to meet old friends.

It was rare for mom and dad did not get to hear me preach.  Both died within the first three years of my ministry.  I think the only sermon my dad heard me preach as a pastor was a Father’s Day message at my first church.  Mom heard a few more, but not many.

The trip to Maplesville was fun.  I spent time with mom.  She met a few old friends and for mom, she heard me for the last time.  In my ministry, my sermon has been the last message people heard before they died.  That is an awesome responsibility when standing behind the Sacred Desk.  My preaching what may be the last word from God a person hears.

The following week, I went to see momma on Saturday morning.  She was standing at the place she stood most, behind the kitchen sink washing dishes.  She was looking out the window as I sneaked up behind her.  Momma did a lot of humming and singing while doing dishes and this morning was no different.

I grabbed her from behind, gave her a big bear hug, lifted her from her feet, and turned round and round with her.  When I put her down, she said, “You broke my rib.”  I said, “Momma I did not squeeze you hard enough to break a rib.”

Momma worked hard her whole life and she and dad never had many worldly possessions.  For several years, mom suffered severe pain, but the doctors could never find anything that may have caused the pain.  Mom hurt so bad that she would spend a couple hours after work resting at my sister’s house before taking the thirty-minute drive home.  My sister lived a couple miles from where momma worked.

So, when I hurt mom, I just added to the pain.  After two or three days following my big squeeze, mom went to the doctor.  When Dr. Funderburk, family friend and former parishioner of mine, read the x-ray, he sent mom to a specialist.

A few years earlier mom had a stroke but recovered.  She rehabbed herself.  Later the doctors diagnosed melanoma cancer on her back.  She had successful surgery.  But the pain continued.

I shall never forget the moment when the doctor told me, I was with her when she had surgery following the hug that broke the rib.  The surgeon said, “Your mom is eaten up with cancer.”  He said the rib was not broken, but I collapsed her rib cage on the left, the good one, with the hug.  The other side is completely eaten away.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that cancer riddled her body.  The surgeon said, “Your mom has six months to a year to live.”  That was around Halloween.

Mom had a bad spell around Thanksgiving.  The doctor said, “Your mom has three to six months to live.” Mom was in the hospital at Christmas.  It would our last Christmas with her.  The doctors said, “Your mom has days to live.”

My sister, brothers, and I spent time with mom.  My sister was marvelous staying the week, while my brothers and I did weekends.  On one of my watches, mom was struggling, always the fighter.  Seeing she needed some encouragement, I said, “Come on old woman, get up, and fix me some biscuits.”  I was not ugly or disrespectful, that was the way mom and I picked on each other.  She loved to fix me biscuits and I loved aggravating her. She tried to get off the bed using her good arm; cancer destroyed her right arm, esophagus, number four disk, thigh, and neck among other parts of her diseased body.  After a gallant effort, she fell back in the bed, looked me dead in the eyes, and asked me, “Am I going to make it?  Don’t lie to me.  I know when you lie.  I can see it in your eyes.”

Mom was obvious to how short her time was.  I told what the doctors told me.  I said, “You have days.”  She said, “I thought so.”

She said, “God has blessed me.  He gave me what I wanted.  Christian kids.  I have a preacher, two deacons, and a Sunday School teacher. I never wanted to be rich, famous, or have a lot of stuff.  All I ever wanted in life was Christian children.  God gave them to me.”

Pivotal events came at Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the start of a New Year.  Twenty-seven days into the New Year momma died.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2a KJV)

 

Time is on My Side

The gadgets that humanity has at its disposal have always shaped society and intellectualism.  Overnight luxuries become necessities.  If society is not careful, gadgets become idols determining what and how we worship.

Take the invention of the clock.  Most of us live by the clock.  A clock wakes us from our sleep.  Our sleep time started by looking at a clock to see the time of night to analyze the proper hours of sleep we would need for proper rest.  We needed to rest because we start work by punching a time card in a time clock.

During that time of work, clocks determine our breaks, dividing our work time into strategic intervals of rest and time to refuel our bodies.  We leave work by looking at a clock and once again punching a time clock.

We race home looking at the clock to determine what time to prepare supper.  Once food has been prepped for cooking, we use the clock to determine how long each dish will have to cook.  This determines what time we will enjoy a meal and how much time we have to enjoy the remaining time doing homework, watching TV, and other pertinent things before time to go to bed.  It makes me wonder how humanity, especially Americans, operates without a clock. 

Speaking of a time clock, ABC Rail in Calera had an incident where men were in line waiting to clock out, which was against company policy and considered stealing.  As a supervisor approached to give a royal chewing to the time stealing employees, a stealing, quick thinking employee confronted him by saying, “Looks like a company as big as ABC Rail could have two clocks that had the same time.”  The supervisor turned and walked away, outsmarted, at least until the next time.

Another question is what was the necessity that prompted someone to invent a clock?

Well, it was the church.  It was invented to see how much more time it would take the preacher to finish his sermon after saying, “Now in closing” when he really means I have five more minutes to preach because it is not after twelve yet.  No, I am kidding.  However, the Catholic Church at the Pope's insistence initiated the invention.

Reading Clarence P. McClelland’s book, Quotation Marks and Exclamation Points (The Lakeside Press 1935), it reminded me of the clock’s origin.  You know necessity is the mother of invention.  McClelland writes, “Lewis Munford in his fascinating book The Techniques of Civilization tells us that the first manifestation of the machine age was in the regular measurement of time and that the clock, and not the steam engine, is the key machine of the modern industrial age.  He shows how the new mechanical conception of time arose largely out of the routine of the monasteries, particular the Benedictine monasteries.  It was in the seventh century that the Pope decreed that the bells of the monasteries should ring seven times in twenty-four hours for devotions.  Some means of keeping count of these punctuation marks in the day and insuring their regular repetition became necessary.  This led ultimately to the invention of the mechanical clock which in the thirteenth century got out of the monasteries into the cities and brought a new regularity into the life of the workman and the merchant.”

Munford says, “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.  The clock, moreover, served as a model for many other kinds of mechanical works, and the analysis of the motion that accompanied the perfection of the clock with the various types of gearing and transmission that were elaborated, contributed to the success of quite different kinds of a machine.”

Did you notice something important there?  “Eternity ceased gradually to serve as the measure and focus of human actions.”  Spiritual things gave way to mechanical things.  Humanity slowly moved from God centered thinking to mechanical thinking.

When Dr. McClelland wrote his book, the Great Depression was six years prior.  That great catastrophe came after a period of great inventions and a frame of mind that technology could save humanity.  It is pre-World War II.

There are those that say that new technology (cell phones, blackberries, etc) are the new gods that people have to have to survive.  The god of technology will save humanity.  I will say that I have been in some worship services and funerals where a cell phone captured more attention than a sermon point.  I have even heard some folks, not necessarily young people, who say they cannot live without a cell phone, computer, etc.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (I John 2:15-17 KJV).

What would Munford think today?  Well, it is time to go!