...all the time in the world

Is time the ultimate commodity in our too-busy, attention-starved, stretched-thin society? No? Then what would you give for another free hour per day, another free day in each week?

Okay...maybe so.

We even monetize the language we use around time.
We make time.
We take time.
We spend time, we waste it.
We save time, and invest it.
When we're in trouble, we buy time.
When we are slap out of luck, we run out of it.

When we're Cher, we wish to turn back time.
...who am I kidding?...when we're anyone, we wish to turn back time, every now and again.

Every appliance from the washing machine to the personal computer (to whatever is being dropped in its own IPO tomorrow) is marketed for the express purpose of saving time.

We are not so much slaves to the clock as we are slaves to the dream of mastering it. Is there a more hopeful thought than this--that there is enough time? There. is. enough. time.

Because there is One for whom time is measured differently. And we are embraced, for all time, by that One.
     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

Go ahead, friend; take all the time you need. There's all the time in the world.

That was joy you heard

Repeat the sounding joy!
---Isaac Watts

I just hosted a Christmas party, and pure joy broke out. One minute we were eating chicken salad and chips and cookies, and drinking ginger ale, and playing Dirty Santa (I stole Meagan's totally cool mug set!), and Matt was dancing in an elf hat --- just your average party.
But then. Joy. And the best kind. The unexpected, sneak-up-on-you, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you joy that takes your breath away. Someone turned around on the piano bench and pounded out a few chords, paged through one of the carol books. Someone got the guitar, Spenser tootled on the recorder (just like she learned in 5th grade). The bass got added, uke, bells, drum, kazoo, Tibetan prayer cymbals. And the joy broke out all over. The kind that makes this generation grab their iPhones and press REC. We sang, and played, and laughed. We made up our own song, made plans to take the show on the road.
It was a little bit of Christmas magic.
A moment of pure, sounding joy.


...so here we stand, whoever we are,
bathed in the light of a star...