...the time that I've taken

A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone;

Short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun.

---Isaac Watts, 1719

Time is such a strange concept. Each day has twenty-four hours in it; some seem to fly by and we leave things undone, while others crawl, second by second. And I’ve known people that I would wager had more hours in the day than I do --- they fit so much more in! And does time take forever when we are waiting on something? Daylight saving time? Don’t get me started! It’s been over a week, and I’m still mad about the hour that disappeared into thin air from my overnight one Saturday night!

This is not a new puzzle; the Israelites were always wondering when God would act, and tiring of waiting for things to happen. In this 300-year-old text, Isaac Watts reminds us that our time and God’s time are different. We may find it easier to wait when we remember that God’s reality runs on a different clock than ours.