As the calendar rolled over into September this week, it hit me that I was now less than two months away from the start of my sabbatical. I’ll share more details about our preparations in the next month, but what particularly caught my attention was a number: eight. That’s how many Sundays are left before I take off for three months. When it was five months, four months, “more than two months” away, it felt like a lot of time—particularly, it felt like a lot of time to get preparatory work done. Now it feels like not much time at all.
If you are anything like me, you are always mindful of multiple deadlines. And if you are anything like me, you feel ambivalent about all those deadlines. On one hand, it’s stressful to think of everything that is needed and is not yet done (right now, I am thinking of three sermons, a weekly email, an adult education plan, and a business license application that will be “due” within the next four days). On the other hand, I know that I need deadlines to complete certain tasks. I attended a divinity school that was famous for its lax deadlines and, not coincidentally, for having a large number of students who took a long time to complete their degree programs, if they ever did. Like many things in life, I need deadlines, and yet I resent them. If I waited to start my sabbatical until everything was perfectly planned, I’d never start at all.
The truth is that we often have some of our best, most memorable experiences when we’re under a deadline. I have seen more than one tense, confused end-of-life scenario relax into peace and even joy after everyone understands that the situation is terminal. There are only so many hours left, so let’s use them with love and care. Christians were once taught to regularly remember their mortality (a reminder is still observed on Ash Wednesday), and I think that’s part of the reason. Treating time as if it’s unlimited just means wasting it. We’re all on a deadline, whether we remember it or not.
And while that may sound like a morbid way to put it—the word “dead” is right there in the word itself after all—I find the effect on myself to be the opposite. It makes each smaller deadline feel more important. My children will graduate high school and probably move out and very likely away from me. Sunday is coming with its own opportunities that will never come again in exactly the same way. Fall, the most beautiful season (for my money) in North Texas, is almost upon us, and it demands to be enjoyed. And I’m about to take the first sabbatical of my career, and the first three-month period of totally self-structured time since I was…fourteen? There’s a lot to make the most of.
Sometimes it seems to me that this is what our faith is most about. Not necessarily the “hereafter” as folks used to call it, or eternity or heaven. Lots of religions have things to say about that, and what our Scriptures say isn’t very distinctive. However, we often overlook the importance of what is right in front of us: our neighbor, our moment in time, our day to rest and worship, and our vocation. When Jesus uses homespun metaphors and parables, I wonder if part of his message to us is that if we can’t grasp the moment we live in, the neighbor in front of us, or the decisions we make every day, we’ll never be able to grasp eternity. What good would it do us?
If you are working toward a deadline, I have your sympathy and encouragement. And if you aren’t, maybe you can find one. Time is precious, and we’re all here to make the most of it.
See you in church—for eight more weeks!
Pastor Ben
If you are anything like me, you are always mindful of multiple deadlines. And if you are anything like me, you feel ambivalent about all those deadlines. On one hand, it’s stressful to think of everything that is needed and is not yet done (right now, I am thinking of three sermons, a weekly email, an adult education plan, and a business license application that will be “due” within the next four days). On the other hand, I know that I need deadlines to complete certain tasks. I attended a divinity school that was famous for its lax deadlines and, not coincidentally, for having a large number of students who took a long time to complete their degree programs, if they ever did. Like many things in life, I need deadlines, and yet I resent them. If I waited to start my sabbatical until everything was perfectly planned, I’d never start at all.
The truth is that we often have some of our best, most memorable experiences when we’re under a deadline. I have seen more than one tense, confused end-of-life scenario relax into peace and even joy after everyone understands that the situation is terminal. There are only so many hours left, so let’s use them with love and care. Christians were once taught to regularly remember their mortality (a reminder is still observed on Ash Wednesday), and I think that’s part of the reason. Treating time as if it’s unlimited just means wasting it. We’re all on a deadline, whether we remember it or not.
And while that may sound like a morbid way to put it—the word “dead” is right there in the word itself after all—I find the effect on myself to be the opposite. It makes each smaller deadline feel more important. My children will graduate high school and probably move out and very likely away from me. Sunday is coming with its own opportunities that will never come again in exactly the same way. Fall, the most beautiful season (for my money) in North Texas, is almost upon us, and it demands to be enjoyed. And I’m about to take the first sabbatical of my career, and the first three-month period of totally self-structured time since I was…fourteen? There’s a lot to make the most of.
Sometimes it seems to me that this is what our faith is most about. Not necessarily the “hereafter” as folks used to call it, or eternity or heaven. Lots of religions have things to say about that, and what our Scriptures say isn’t very distinctive. However, we often overlook the importance of what is right in front of us: our neighbor, our moment in time, our day to rest and worship, and our vocation. When Jesus uses homespun metaphors and parables, I wonder if part of his message to us is that if we can’t grasp the moment we live in, the neighbor in front of us, or the decisions we make every day, we’ll never be able to grasp eternity. What good would it do us?
If you are working toward a deadline, I have your sympathy and encouragement. And if you aren’t, maybe you can find one. Time is precious, and we’re all here to make the most of it.
See you in church—for eight more weeks!
Pastor Ben
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