Mtr Mary Trainor

[ A clock] is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on…*

Dear friend,

Time. There are various views on it. Some treat time as a general suggestion of when to arrive. Others ignore it altogether. Still others treat time as though it were God’s first commandment: Thou shall not be late.

Regardless of personal attitudes (I’m in the first commandment group,) a sun rises, a sun sets without our permission. A year, a decade, a lifetime go by, often without notice. We might feel that time is speeding by or dragging its heels—but for every day, for every one of us, the speed of time is uniform.

…whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.

But just because time’s speed is uniform doesn’t mean we can’t move faster when something critical is at stake.

At first glance, Jesus seems to be careless with time upon hearing that his good friend Lazarus is gravely ill. He waits two days, a delay that means Jesus will not get to Bethany before Lazarus dies.

A tall one I know at the end of a hallway…has seen five hopes go in five years…

Everything with Jesus is strategic. He isn’t goofing off while a good friend approaches death. Time did not get away from him after hearing from Mary and Martha, the man’s sisters.

Jesus is not a victim of bad timing, nor is Lazarus. Jesus’ timing is impeccable. He knows how and when he must act. He is no slave to time, as we may be. Rather, he lives and moves and has his being in God’s time—time that cannot be measured by a clock.

Mtr Mary

*Clocks by Carl Sandburg. 1918.