The Time is Now

            Our daughter gave us a lovely clock which we have hung in our bathroom.  Around the face is proclaimed:  The time is now.  Smell your roses.  Take your walk.  Read your book.  What beautiful words.  I look at them every day and think about how time goes on and how little I make of it. 

            I just celebrated my eightieth birthday.  That might seem like old to some people, but it doesn’t to me.  Our kids came and brought a cake, gave me presents and we all celebrated with a wonderful evening.  I loved it.  But I can’t get that clock out of my mind.  The time is now. That is a constant reminder of where we are.  This is the moment.  It is the one to live, now.  I think that a lot of the time,  I think that time is more flexible.  I can do things later, or maybe not at all.  I need to be hit over the head with that phrase:  The time is now.  This is the moment.  Now. 

            If my eighties are like the rest of my life, they will be filled with events.  In 2005, when I was seventy-three, I had a brain tumor.  Because of a remarkable neurosurgeon named Sabatino Bianco, I was cured of it.  The rather large tumor was removed from the left frontal lobe of my brain, and after about two years of recovery, I had my faculties back and could get on with my life.  That was a profound moment for me.  I remember going into the operating room and slowly becoming calm.  I closed my eyes before the anesthetic was given to me, said a quiet prayer and knew beyond a doubt that things would be all right.  They would be all right whether I lived or I died.  I knew absolutely that God was present with me in that frightening moment.  That time was incredibly important and I had God’s help to regain my life.  

            Restoration is the message of Christmas.  When I read the lessons, they are all about how things have gone sour for the people and how desperately they need to be redeemed.  They are hungry for God’s presence in their lives, in their communities.  And that is what God promises to all of them.  In Isaiah, it is written:  Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. And in Matthew’s gospel, the angel tells Joseph the same thing and he takes Mary as his wife and they wait for the birth of her son, which at the angel’s command they name Jesus.  

            What a powerful story of restoration and redemption.  That is what Christmas commemorates and how we need to live to mark this glorious season.  May God bless us richly in this time that is now.