-Caveat Lector- THURSDAY JUNE 10 1999 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Tick, tick, tick ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- One simple word, repeated three times. You knew before reading the first word of this column that it would somehow touch upon time. Who among us does not remember the quiet, persistent sound of that clock in our childhood bedrooms, ticking softly away, as our household went to sleep around us? The 11:55 freight train, the sound from its horn streaming on ahead of it, parting the night: three ticks of sound, two ticks of silence and then over again, the train on its way into the distance. Or the city, reluctantly and restlessly tossing and turning before settling into fitful slumber late into the morning. The windows open on a warm night, neighbors in the adjacent apartment snoring, or pacing the floor, a crying infant being comforted. My dictionary has a column of definitions for "time." They run the gamut from philosophical, "a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession," to the mundane: "by paying in installments." But I wonder -- is not more of the truth of life wrapped up in the latter? Our lives are lived in installments; we call them days, hours, minutes and seconds. Tick, tick, tick. ... The 86,400 single-second "ticks" that comprised yesterday were merely an installment payment we made on that box of dreams we longingly refer to as "our future." There it sits on the shelf, behind the counter at the Shoporama. Sometimes we see it, wrapped in its glittering packaging, as we hand the clerk the next installment of our lives, and he writes out our receipt. Our retirement, the day the children graduate and leave home, that cruise we've been meaning to take. ... Soon we will be able to pick it up and handle it, enjoy it, show it off proudly to our friends. The young clerk smiles and remarks, "Only twelve more installments until your retirement is all paid for. Thank you for spending your life at Shoporama!" It is said that modern men and women value time above all else. America has become a service economy: people doing things that other people don't want to do, don't know how to do, or don't have time to do -- but will pay to have done. Dinner prepared at the burger palace and eaten in the car on the way home; daycare for lonely children while both parents pursue their careers as taxpayers; 18-year-old lovers and "it's my right abortions" for our 14-year-old daughters because daddy never had have time to hold her in his arms and talk to her. Our time is so valuable, and the Shoporama installment payments on our "layaway tomorrows" must be met. Who among us has not wondered if time is not God's cruel joke on the human race? We bemoan the past; we fret about the future. And yet of God the psalmist tells us, "For a thousand years in thy sight [are but] as yesterday when it is past, and [as] a watch in the night" (Psalm 90). And yet Jesus, who seemed to know a lot about God, focused most often on the present moment. His biographer, Luke, records that as a twelve-year-old boy lost in Jerusalem, Jesus was found three days later by his frantic parents, sitting at the feet of the teachers in the temple courts, questioning them. "Why were you searching for me?" he asked Mom and Dad. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" Tomorrow would come, but He was occupied with the people around him today. And so it was throughout Jesus' ministry: "time," while it occasionally referenced the prior or the past, most often described a specific piece of the here-and-now. In fact, when his followers pressed him about the future, Jesus told them, "Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is" (Mark 13:33). So here is a great paradox: We who have instantaneous worldwide communications, the greatest labor-saving devices in the history of the world, and the atomic clock that measures time down to the decaying atoms of our universe -- we have no time for the people inhabiting the moment in which we live. Yet the One who predated time and inhabits eternity came to earth and lived with people in the present. He had no money, no organization, and no power. He lived only 33 years. He never worried about tomorrow, and there is no record of him in the Shoporama. But 2,000 years later, no individual has ever made a greater impact upon men and women down through history than Jesus Christ. His final word on time was recorded by the Apostle John: "And he saith to me, Seal not the words of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand" (Revelation 22:10). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_mcmillan/19990610_xccmc_tick_tick_.shtm l Bard Visit me at: The Center for Exposing Corruption in the Federal Government http://www.xld.com/public/center/center.htm Federal Government defined: ....a benefit/subsidy protection racket! DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
