Taking Time

It happens every year, but we always seem to act surprised. These holidays roll around and time warps and it can be so easy for life to warp. We see through a glass dimly and between pumpkin pie, peppermint mochas, and sales ads we can find it easier to enter a holi-daze. A get the shopping done, bake the cookies, and trim the tree induced stupor that leaves us ready for the New Year so that we can make a fresh start. This season should be our fresh start and not a time to exhaust ourselves with passing things.

Isn't this season all about birth and new life? Aren't we counting advent and all the days down to the remembrance of a singular glorious day?

I managed to squeeze a minor in philosophy into my three years of college. I found in those few years a fascination with time. I read Boethius and pondered Aristotle and acted like I understood it all...but the truth is I was only able to understand one thing...God is bigger than time and our days are numbered by an eternal God.

I like to boil that down to this one joy filling, life giving, heart dancing thing. 
In Christ, time belongs to us. 
Time is there for the taking. 

Those days when you think that you simply must get this or that done at the expense of all the things that really matter...stop. Those days when you think that you need to send that one more email while the baby plays by herself...stop. Those days when you think that turning the t.v. on rather than talking face to face with the one you love...stop. Those early mornings when you bounce onto facebook rather than cracking the Word...stop. Take time and make it give joy in return.

I often complain that I don't have the time. I don't have time to give selflessly. I don't have time to listen fully. I don't have time to read one more book...sing one more song. If I'm honest I don't have time because I don't take time. Time is there for the taking. We take time and we mold it into something that works for us. The bigger job is molding it into something that works for the Gospel alive in our lives and the lives of those we love.

Some of us are planners and others of us are confessedly not planners. I would say that most of us land somewhere in that no man's land in between. We try to plan, but the best laid plans of mice and men...sigh...The only thing I know for sure is if we don't take time, time will take us...It will take us for a tilt-a-whirl type ride that finds us wrapping presents in the car on the way to grandma and grandpas.

Take time and bleed it dry. This holiday season take time and squeeze all the goodness out of it. 

We're taking a break from 5 Minute Friday for the month of December. I'm planning a little series entitled, Taking Time to Thrive: Transforming the Holidays Into Holy Days each Friday. I hope you'll read along as I explore how to slow this whirlwind season down a bit and find a way to breathe in the midst of it all.