Until the fourth grade, my childhood was mostly a languid adventure of goofing off and staying out of trouble. I remember almost nothing from that period except a few isolated incidents under one or the other of those categories. If I ever had a serious thought, I don’t remember it.
I do not recall reading anything prior to the fourth grade, though I know I must have (e.g. See Spot Run.). But in the spring of that year, I was jolted into change. Because that was when I embarked upon the discovery of time.
The memory of that beginning is strong. Mrs. Jordan, my fourth-grade teacher, required every student to memorize and recite—either to her or the whole class—the Gettysburg Address. The Civil War Centennial was coming up, and Mrs. Jordan wanted us to have some understanding of that cataclysmic episode of American history. I had not so much as heard of the Gettysburg Address, although I was familiar with Abraham Lincoln (I lived in Illinois). And as for the larger context, first, of the Civil War, I was largely ignorant; and as for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, well, that might have been Mars for all I knew.
Mrs. Jordan provided some background about the Civil War, Gettysburg, and Lincoln’s commemorative speech. Interesting, but hardly relevant to the task before me, so I supposed. I had not to this point in my education managed to memorize the multiplication tables. Memorizing anything was not a strong suit for me, but I don’t remember why.
I set my mind to surmount this challenge, and I began reading the Address over and over. I tried to envision what Lincoln was talking about. How “great” was this “great civil war”? Did people die? Americans? What “portion” of what “field” was he dedicating? What “new birth of freedom” was he announcing?
I found a few of the phrases utterly delightful to say aloud: “poor power to add or detract”; “thus far so nobly advanced”; “we here highly resolve.” With each reading a scene—not just of the speech but of the battle—was taking shape in my brain, entirely self-generated. It never occurred to me to look up either the Civil War or the Battle of Gettysburg in our Encyclopedia Americana at home. I’m not even sure I told my parents about this assignment. Memorizing the Gettysburg Address wasn’t a learning experience; it was an assignment, a challenge, one of the very first challenges that interrupted my goofing-off lifestyle. I was focused on the challenge, not the history in which the Address was enfolded.
I must have read the Gettysburg Address 40, 50, 100 times that spring, each time turning my eyes away at the part I had not learned and forcing the words into my brain. Then I would recite the whole thing up to that point again. Then again, until I had it. Some of the words I didn’t fully understand, but I wasn’t being graded on understanding, just reciting.
Somewhere toward the end of the challenge, just about the time I finally memorized every word in order, my mind was arrested by the opening phrase: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation…” I’d read this over and over. It was the first sentence I memorized. But I wasn’t clear what it meant: Fourscore and seven years? It was very cryptic. Folks in Granite City, Illinois didn’t talk that way. Maybe they did in Springfield? I had no idea what Lincoln was saying.
I knew that our country had been founded a long time ago. I mean, like, way long time ago maybe, I didn’t know, hundreds of years. As a family, we celebrated the Fourth of July every year, but it never once occurred to me to learn the details of why. Independence from what? Or whom? The “Founding” was just a very long time ago, that’s all. I’d heard of Washington, Jefferson, and even Ben Franklin, but they were more mythical characters than real actors in history.
When I finally figured out that “Four score and seven years ago” meant 87 years, I was gobsmacked. Wait. What? That Civil War thing happened only 87 years after the founding of the country? 87 years? I knew some people who were 80 years old. And the Centennial was coming right up. So it was, like, a little more than 87 years since the Civil War ended? How could I not have known this? How long is a year, anyway? I mean, time-wise? In particular, how did it happen that I had no sense of time and of the relatively short span of years between these events? I became suddenly awake to the concept of years and, to a lesser extent, time. How old was I? My mom and dad? Grandparents? When was our town founded? How old was St. Louis, right across the river? And Stan Musial?
The notion of years and time began breathing through my brain off and on like an accordion—in and out, each time a new rasping sound with more questions about time and age: How old was this toad? The trees in our city park? How long had the park been here? Was anyone still alive from when it was first built?
These were hardly philosophical questions, but they began to cook up a fascination with time—what it is, how long it goes, what keeps it going, where it’s headed—that sizzled in my brain like an alluring mirepoix for two or three years. Then it settled down into a mysterious subterranean and intermittent musing which, as I grew older, made me feel very philosophical at times. I had no answers to my questions, but as I would muse on it, I felt a little like I was stepping outside of time to consider its nature and purpose.
Four score and seven years had wrenched open a room in my soul which, as a young adult, I began to furnish with ideas, images, questions, and speculations. The Gettysburg Address assignment was my first experience of what is sometimes referred to as “time’s arrow,” the onward, ineluctable forward movement of time to who knows where.
My musings ebbed and flowed for several years. But I came more intensely face to face with time when I was a student in seminary. Susie and I had two children by then, and it was not long before I began feeling overwhelmed and sensing that I was in danger of not completing all my assignments—on time. I read John Alexander’s Managing Our Work and Ted Engstrom and R. Alec MacKenzie’s Managing Your Time. These rekindled my fascination with time and surfaced my earlier questions again, encouraging me that, whatever time is, I needed to be more aware of and proactive in using it. Time was to be managed. You could somehow get a hold of time and make it do your bidding. You could get time to work for you while you worked in it.
After seminary I continued thinking about time more in earnest. I read some secular writers, notably Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle by Stephen J. Gould and A Writer’s Time by Ken Atchity (I was an aspiring writer). The most important aspect of reading other writers was that I felt like I was in serious company. Time was worth thinking about, understanding, and using accordingly. I was discovering time such that I could examine it, seize it, and, following the teaching of the apostle Paul, redeem and make good use of it as a child of God (Eph. 5.15-17).
Three conclusions began to precipitate in my mind. First, time is a creation of God, a context for life and living things. Before God said, “Let there be…” there was no time. Time was made by God, not all at once, but in successive moments and days. This was—and continues to be—a mystery to me, that “God did not create the universe long ago but creates it at this minute—at every minute” (C. S. Lewis, Miracles).
So, second, since time is a creature, it has substance of some sort. All creatures exist in time, and time is something like them, a framework, like air, which we can’t see or entirely grasp but that we know exists because we exist in it. Time, as the Scriptures have it, is thus part of what the Son of God upholds every moment by His powerful Word (Heb. 1.3). He creates time anew every moment simply by speaking its continuance.
Thus, time is part of creation and a gift of God, a “precious” gift, as Jonathan Edwards put it, “because our eternal welfare depends upon the improvement of it.” (The Preciousness of Time). Time comes to us, moment by moment from the mouth of God, passes through our use, and returns to its Sender, either to honor Him and advance His purposes or to be recorded as a gift that was disregarded: “Every part of it is successively offered to us, that we may choose whether we will make it our own, or not” (Edwards). Past time is no more; future time is merely in prospect. All we have is the succession of moments granted to us by the power of God’s Word.
So, third, all time aims and moves toward the very Son of God, before Whom, ultimately, it will pass into His eternal Presence as a new creation and context for an entirely new heavens and new earth, where righteousness dwells: “For of Him and through Him and unto Him are all things, to Whom be glory forever” (Rom. 11.36).
Time, therefore, is the succession of moments descending from the Word of God, passing through the use of His creatures, and returning to the Creator of time, continuing until time as we know it ends. “Time,” Edwards wrote, “is a talent given us by God; He hath set us our day; and it is not for nothing. Our day was appointed for some work; there He will, at the day’s end, call us to an account.” Edwards insisted that time was given to the followers of Jesus that they should accomplish in it all the work assigned to them by God, for His glory and their blessing and the good of their neighbors. It is therefore indeed a most precious gift. We who believe must therefore “redeem” our time, that is, spend it well in words and deeds that line up with the Creator’s purposes. Doing so will not allow much time for goofing off, but it will help in keeping us out of trouble.
I find now, in this “third third” (Packer) of my life, that I am more aware and conscious of, and more determined to make the best use of, the time God gives me each day. 87 years is not a very long period of time. But if I make it there, ten years from now, my desire is that my use of time will demonstrate continual gratitude for this great gift. I pray daily, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom… Let Your work appear unto Your servants, and Your glory to their children. And let the beauty of the LORD of hosts be upon us, and establish the work of hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands” (Ps. 90.12, 16, 17).
I remember the Gettysburg Address to this day. Well, mostly. But I especially savor reciting that opening phrase, “Fourscore and seven years ago…” Awareness of time began to weasel its way into my experience via those few words threescore and seven years ago. My, how time flies.
Image Credit: Caspar David Friedrich, “Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon” (1824)
