Time Lost is Time Lost - But, ah, the Time Ahead

On my desk at home are various pictures of my family in different stages of our life. 

The interesting thing is the pictures are somewhat random moments in my family’s life  - one “selfie” of my wife and me before we knew to call it a selfie (we had been married about 4 ½ months).  Others show my sons at different ages and one shows me and my four sisters on my 40^th birthday.

Why these particular pictures?  No idea.   But they got me thinking that, wow, life moves awfully quickly.  They also got me thinking about how often I waste time on the unimportant, the trivial, the silly, the downright nonsensical.  For instance, I’ve played 2239 games of Solitaire since I bought my current laptop about three years ago.  Granted, each game takes only about a minute and a half – still that adds up to 3358.50 minutes – over 56 hours – two days and 8 hours for what?  Moments of pleasure?  Sheer escapism?  Pathetic.

Imagine if I had spent 56 hours in prayer – what might have happened?  Might my prayers have been the reason someone other than The Donald and Hillary are the nominees for president?  Maybe not, but who knows?  Jesus made some pretty extravagant promises about what God would do in response to our prayers . . .  Closer to home, might those prayers have helped draw my sons closer to Christ?  How about my wife?  Me?

On the other side of the coin, I’ve been preaching through the book of Mark at a local assisted living center and have accumulated 5166 minutes on my sermon outlines  That’s 510 minutes on each chapter, or about 8 ½ hours per chapter.  That doesn’t include outside reading, prayer, and contemplation – that’s just editing time for sermon outlines.  So, I suppose, one might say it balances out.

But that’s not true, is it?  I don’t get to say to God – look bud, I’ve got almost 2000 more minutes in my review of Mark than I have in Solitaire, so don’t judge me, man!  The time is gone, whatever I’ve done with it.  Yet, don’t we tend toward that view in our Christian life?  Maybe you don’t – but I do.  I put things on scales of my own making, then try to justify my less than admirable (or downright sinful and awful) conduct with my good works.  However, God simply doesn’t work that way.  He didn’t have to give the Israelites the promised land, but he did.  He didn’t have to give them a human king, but he did.  He didn’t have to bring them back to the promised land after their extended stay in Babylon, but he did.  He didn’t have to send his Son as the promised Messiah, who would come to take the punishment for the sins of all he came to save, but he did.  He doesn’t have to return to take the faithful to heaven, but he will.

God doesn’t owe us a thing.  He isn’t obligated to balance things on the scales of justice.  We are his creation.  This blog post doesn’t get to ask me for justice.  I created it; I get to post it or not; I get to edit it or not; I get to delete it or not.  I owe it nothing.  The analogy isn’t perfect, but the point remains.  We are God’s to do with as he chooses – he is sovereign, so we don’t have any right to any justice except that which he provides to us. 

Yet, yet, yet, and this is the glorious part of it, God often graces us with mercy rather than justice.  Like with the Israelites – they didn’t deserve any of the good things they got.  The scales, if properly balanced, would have worked out against them.  Nonetheless, God put his thumb on those scales and, instead of finding the Israelites wanting, granted them grace they didn't merit. 

So, even though I’ve wasted too much time on solitaire (and other nonsense) it doesn’t mean I have to keep doing so.  Moreover, I don’t have to constantly bash myself for my stupidity.

Paul put it rightly: “but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.”  Philippians 3:13 – 14.

The time lost is time lost.

But, ah, the time ahead – the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ – that’s a time to anticipate and savor.  And since God has put his thumb on the scale for me by sending Jesus, I’m going to take advantage of his good grace and “press on toward the goal.”

I don’t know exactly what this means going forward, but it has to mean that I spend my time more wisely.  I can pray more; I can read my Bible more; I can witness more; I can be kinder more; I can spend more time with my family.  This doesn’t tip the scale any more than God already has, but I’ll never have to look back again and count up hours wasted.

Twenty years from now (if I have that much time), maybe I’ll see a picture on my desk and they’ll show a grizzled 53 year old at his keyboard, and I’ll say, thank God for those 3358.50 minutes in prayer.

Trump Got Trumpier (and lost an endorsement)

I recently made the case for Donald Trump because the thought of a Hillary Clinton presidency disgusts me.  Her avarice, mendacity and secular humanism drive her to grotesque positions about life, faith, and about the use (abuse) of power.  However, while the latest revelation that Trump made crude comments about women is not truly revealing or startling, Mr. Trump’s failure to make a humble and heartfelt plea that he’s changed (or trying to change) is.  I repent of my previous acceptance of Trump. 

Understand, my change of heart isn't due to the revelation that 11 years ago Trump said and/or did something crude.  Nothing in Trump's past would surprise me.  Then again, nothing from anyone’s past ought to surprise me.  My own past is not pristine.  But part of the Christian mindset has to be a willingness to forgive those who truly repent.  Whatever one might argue about George W. Bush, his bouts with alcoholism and drug use and his repentance for those failures say much of his character.  I guess I have continued to hope (obviously hopelessly) that Trump might follow a similar path, acknowledge his past sins, and ask forgiveness not only from those he specifically hurt, but of the American public in general.  Our shared American heritage derives from Christianity, whether some wish to admit this or not, and we love it when someone sincerely begs our pardon.  My Dad always told me that if Richard Nixon had immediately come forward upon learning of the Watergate break in and had apologized and demanded those who acted be brought to justice, he would have remained President.  It was the cover up, not the break in, that killed his presidency.  The truth is we Americans are a generally forgiving group and we respect sincere apologies.

Trump’s past moral failures are not, in themselves, the measure of the man – nor are anyone’s past failures the measure of them.  Thank God this is true.  Paul said that he was “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” Philippians 3:13.  So crude remarks made years ago are, alone, an insufficient basis for rejecting his candidacy, particularly when so much is on the line.  However, Trump’s attitude is a basis for rejecting him.  My previous arguments in favor of voting for Trump did not suggest Trump’s character made him palatable; quite the opposite, I was careful to note his character was lacking.  Yet, I continued to believe that despite his character flaws, a Clinton presidency meant things that were intolerable, especially to evangelical Christians.  At least, I thought, a Trump presidency offered some glimmer of hope that some of that “basket of intolerables” Clinton clearly offered could be avoided.

Like so many others, I now find myself unable to continue defending the notion of voting for Trump.  The rift with the Republicans points to an inarguable difficulty governing.  His unwillingness to even attempt to humor us with some fake contrition suggests a lack of conscience on par with Mrs. Clinton’s.  She has blithely lied to the FBI, then lied about what the FBI was saying about her, she shrugged her shoulders about Benghazi, covered up her husband’s many indiscretions with women, made clear her contempt and disdain for those she deems beneath her, and has no regard for the value of human life, especially if that life happens to reside with a woman’s uterus.  Trump’s moral failures fall elsewhere, but they are no less egregious.

What is pathetically absurd is this was a golden opportunity for Trump to seal the deal.  If he is so impervious to the obvious, then it is clear he cannot run the country with the kind of alacrity required of the leader of the free world.  The obvious is that if he had hung his head a bit, admitted what a rotten scoundrel he had been in the past, claimed to have changed (or at least offered that he was working hard on becoming a better man), all would have been forgiven except by those who wouldn’t vote for him anyway.  Plus, it would make Clinton’s shenanigans look even more despicable because she’ll never take that step.  This was a GIFT, not a disaster.

Unfortunately, Trump just got Trumpier.  He tweets more.  He blames more.  He disparages more.  He overblows more.  He scowls more.  And he just lost at least one more vote.

I suggest we add this word to the language: trumpier: adjective – Describing the quality of making a situation worse by doing the opposite of what would ordinarily be helpful.  (Joe lost his cool when the officer told him to stop talking.  Instead of shutting up, he got trumpier and got himself arrested over a simple speeding ticket).