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In the year 2000 Forbes Magazine featured a special edition on a single topic that it called "the biggest issue of our age -- time." The editors wrote, "We've beaten, or at least stymied, most of humanity's monsters: disease, climate, geography, and memory. But time still defeats us. Lately its victories seem more complete than ever. Those timesaving inventions of the last half-century have somehow turned on us. We now hold cell phone meetings in traffic jams, and 24-7 has become the most terrifying phrase in modern life."

While many of us experience time as a source of distress, the Bible clearly presents time as a gift. It is, in fact, the only means by which we can receive the grace of God. Time and space are God's chosen media for self-revelation -- as evidenced by the arrival of Jesus at a real moment in history at a real place on this planet -- and they are the only media through which God may be encountered this side of heaven. Why then has time seemingly become a crushing burden?

For one thing, time is limited, and chronically busy Americans chafe at such an unyielding limitation. We may discern inequalities in certain gifts that God has given to us -- financial resources and Spirit-given empowerments come to mind -- but time is different. With regard to time, people are truly equal. We all are charged with managing exactly sixty minutes over the next hour. In a culture that seems increasingly panicked about such a basic responsibility, what is the call of God? Let's consider a trio of responses.

First, our call clearly is to embrace God's perspective on time. What is God's perspective? It is that time is not our enemy. We may complain that we don't have enough time or that our time is going too fast. But God's perspective is that we already have at our disposal exactly the number of hours we need to do what God wants us to do -- and never to feel rushed.

The call of God is to slow down, to be present at each moment as it arrives. Time is a gift to be opened one minute at a time -- and no faster. Psalm 90 informs us that God is uniquely able to experience a "telescoping" of time -- that for God a thousand years are like a day, but even more intriguing, that a day is as rich and meaningful as a thousand years. Quite literally every moment matters eternally -- which means that this present moment counts forever.

One of the great human obsessions of the modern age is to make time jump through more hoops -- to force time to be more productive. That's why so many of us are suckers for the next generation of computers, date books, and palm pilots. Even ESPN has endeavored to fit more than one hour of sports highlights into a one-hour show. That's why NFL kickoffs that are returned for a touchdown (without doubt one of the most dramatic moments in football) are now being replayed as if the fast-forward button is stuck. Instead of presenting the play at normal speed, which consumes all of twelve or fourteen seconds, the action is frequently speeded up -- now consuming just six or seven seconds -- so viewers can quickly move on to see another highlight, and then another, and then another.

First-time visitors to London frequently conclude that they may have only one chance to explore such an historic city. Therefore they sign on for one of those everything-included-hurry-up-and-keep-moving tours. "Now here's The Tower of London, there's Big Ben, and just over your right shoulder is Buckingham Palace." You know the drill. Hurry. Stand over there and let me get your picture in front of the lions at Trafalgar Square. Wow, there sure are a lot of pigeons. Hey, look at the time. Let's go. That is all too often an out-of-towner's only exposure to the city of London.

By contrast, Americans who move to London have a completely different encounter with the city. They don't rush from place to place as tourists. They are residents. Experienced Londoners know that years are required simply to begin to comprehend what this place has meant to human history. A tourist cannot possibly appreciate that perspective in a four-hour sweep across town.

With all of our hearts, we must resist the temptation to become tourists in our own lives. "I'd like to take the four-hour highlight tour of parenting, please." "Come on, kids, it's time to do third grade. Stand right there and let me get your picture. Okay, on to the next stage in your life." We must refuse to buy tickets for the quick walk-through of the Museum of Religious Experiences. God calls us not to rush through the time that has been given to us, but to be fully alive to God and to each other -- actually to become residents within these moments we've been provided. Why? Every one of these moments counts forever.

Second, our call is to embrace God's shape to time. There is a God-ordained shape to human life. This shape is what gives our lives a meaningful rhythm. Mornings and evenings, mornings and evenings -- it's like a tide. When we rebel against that rhythm, there are consequences.

What time is it any more? The boundaries and shape of daily life are rapidly becoming blurred. One can now shop on-line any hour of the day. A television commercial portrays a group of stunned consumers standing in the middle of the night outside a conventional store at a mall. No lights are on. The customers are puzzled: "It's closed. Man, that is so weird." We are taught to expect that everything should be available every hour of every day. What season is it any more? We no longer have to wait for summer to get strawberries and watermelons. We can find ripe peaches year-round in Snow Belt stores. Contemporary culture clearly wants to remove the boundaries customarily imposed by the more classic shapes and rhythms of time.

In an act that is flagrantly counter-cultural, the guides of certain spiritual retreats demand that weekend participants give up their watches. Giving up one's watch is tantamount to giving up control -- which is precisely the act of faith God asks of us moment by moment when it comes to time. Our call is to trust God and to pay attention to three important rhythms connected to our experience of time.

The God-given shape of time, first, invites us to Divert Daily. That means that we must stop every day for rest. A key component of the management of time requires us to get the sleep our bodies need. For some of us (who seemingly have taxi meters for brains and are always counting the cost of every squandered minute) the very idea that we sleep away one third of our lives seems like an incalculable waste. But it is during those sleeping hours that our bodies carry out something like eighty percent of the biological processes required to maintain basic health. At many junctures, God's Word challenges us to commit a portion of each day to the experience of simply being in the presence of God. The goal of that quiet time is not to be productive. We are simply called to be.

The shape of time that God has provided, second, also invites us to Withdraw Weekly. This speaks to the notion of the Sabbath. God worked for six days at the beginning of creation -- then God rested. For us to cease our work one day out of seven is to be like God. God doesn't suggest a Sabbath. It is mandated as one of the original Ten Commandments. Our Sabbath doesn't have to be on Sunday nor even on a weekend. But one-seventh of our time during each week should be reserved to pray and to play.

God's design for time also invites us, third, to Abandon Annually. In Old Testament times there were prescribed festivals for God's people. Whole families were compelled to walk all the way to Jerusalem three times each year. These became annual opportunities to enjoy life and to enjoy each other. Essentially these festivals amounted to divinely ordained vacations. To believe that we shouldn't take a break each year -- to assert or to act as if our work is far too important to slow down -- is to take ourselves far too seriously and to violate the rhythm and shape of time as God has provided it. As the fractured proverb puts it, Better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.

As we grasp God's perspective that time is not a monster to be tamed, and as we live out the God-provided shape in which human life makes sense, Paul's heartfelt cry at the beginning of 2 Corinthians, chapter 6, takes on a far deeper significance. Our call is to see that this is the time to receive God's grace.

This moment may seem like an ordinary moment, but it is the gift of an extraordinary God. This moment counts -- forever. If we were asked the question, "Do you want to do something today that will be eternally significant?" our tendency is to sigh, "You know, my day is so full. I really don't have time." To that Paul thunders in verse 2, "See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!"

Perhaps we are waiting for the crush of time to pass. Then we will turn our attention fully to spiritual questions -- when we're not so busy. Perhaps we are waiting for the right circumstances to arrive, or for a hardship to vanish. We're waiting for more money or more education or more insight or more data. First let's have the baby, or wait for the children to get into school, or wait until summer vacation, or wait until the nest is empty. Then we'll have time.

Paul couldn't agree less. In verses 3 through 10 there isn't the faintest evidence that a hardship-free life is just over the horizon. It will never be the "right time" to act. Therefore God calls us to act now. The wise heart is the one that grasps that this moment has become a world-changing moment when we let it fully belong to God. "As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain." Will we capture the richness of this moment through an act of spiritual submission -- or miss this opportunity altogether?

Henry Stanley is chiefly remembered as the American journalist who, in 1871, having walked into a jungle clearing in central Africa, spotted a pale-skinned man and said, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" In his own right, however, he was also an explorer of uncharted territory in Africa. Historians believe that until Stanley's expedition five years later, no one -- either inside or outside Africa -- had ever been all the way down the treacherous Congo River, with its canyons, gorges, and cannibals. His trip took 999 days and was filled with unimaginable hardships.

One night proved to be so fraught with difficulties and doubts that Stanley realized he had to make a choice -- either to keep going forward into the unknown, or to head back toward security. That night he approached his friend and helper Frank Pocock. "Now, Frank, my son, sit down. I am about to have a long and serious chat with you. Life and death -- yours and mine -- hang on the decision I make tonight." What should they do?

Pocock and Stanley decided to flip a coin -- an Indian rupee. Heads they would go forward; tails they would go home. The coin came up tails. Disappointed, they flipped the coin again. Tails. "How about three out of five?" Once again it was tails. In fact the coin came up tails six times in a row. The two men decided to draw straws -- long straw to go forward, short straw to go back. Every time they drew, however, they picked the short straw.

Stanley and Pocock suddenly realized that they had already made their decision. No matter what the coins or the straws "told them," in their hearts all they wanted to do was head down the Congo River into the Great Unknown. That is precisely what they did, making history in the process. Their most significant opportunity for adventure didn't come and go in vain.

This day we don't need to flip coins or draw straws to know what is on God's heart. God calls us to receive grace -- to embrace God's perspective and shape of time. We aren't called to wait for the next moment. This is the time to respond. This moment belongs to God. That's why it counts forever. "See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!"