[A fairly unedited journal entry from this day in 2021. I was onto something then; thought I’d better post it.]
So, sure, the ancients counted the number of years of one’s life – just think of Methuselah. But in an agrarian society what was perhaps more important was not what year it was but what time of year it was. And even for the Israelites when it came to counting years, you might only need count in 7s, and in 7 groups of 7, up to 49, add one more for the Jubilee – and then start over. Even counting years had a rhythm to it, a start and an end, or rather a start and a start over.
All of which brings us to the point that creation was designed to a great degree with circularity in mind. And even with our perhaps more modern notion of linearity, progress and the modern conception of ‘time’, historians are still tempted to speak of history ‘repeating’ or ‘coming back around on’ itself. One can sympathise with the dispensationalists here, recognising that perhaps there are cosmic seasons just as there are annual ones. We recognise patterns in history as we do in the sky.
Again this perhaps helps reframe a teleology lost in the mire of questions about ‘how long’ we might be living in the ends of the ages before Jesus’ return/some kind of mass resurrection, etc. Significantly Scripture speaks in terms of new creation, or renewed creation, as the fulfilment of God’s redeeming work through Christ; we would say, of his future. But it’s also here and now, and ongoing; and there will indeed come a time for Christ’s return, but we might better ask, instead of ‘what year’ he might return, ‘what time of year?’ When you see the figs ripened, you know that summer is near; so too when you see all these things, know that he is near (Luke 21:29-31, paraphrased). Watching the signs of the times had all to do with recognising the pattern and rhythm of creation, and seeing the activity of God behind it, who made it all, and knowing how to act. Does God act more in seasons than he does along a strict timeline?
Our modern western society is driven by a continually ticking clock. God’s order calls us into graceful step with the rhythm of his creation. Days, months, seasons and years. A time for labour, and a time to rest. Summer and winter and springtime and harvest.
I found some stuff early on in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry helpful as regards recognising the modernity (relatively) of the notion of keeping time, measuring the day into hours, etc. vs. the ancient wisdom of rolling with the patterns of creation.
Another thing. The thing about the day beginning at sundown for the Jews meant that the day began with sleep, i.e., trust, because your first act of the day was to lie down and become unconscious and, therefore, potentially vulnerable. You prepared yourself for the day ahead by how you rested.
Another thing. The second law of thermodynamics belongs to that place of atrophy, the grave. God’s law of new creation in Christ Jesus belongs to that place of continual renewal and rebirth, the garden, tended by the risen Christ.
Ben David Trigg 