It is possible to live “out of time.” That is, to cling to a moment, season, or epoch and “how things were then” and “how we thought or spoke back then.”
We need not even have experienced this period of time, but have only learned about it. Put another way, it is possible to experience a longing or nostalgia for a moment, season, or epoch that we did not ourselves experience. (This happens in the church today in multiple tribes across whatever spectrum you’d care to map.)
And it is a deeply understandable instinct! When we feel threatened or out of control, we grab on to the things that we know. But, it is not a faithful way forward. Living “out of time” is an attempt to domesticate time, to control the unfolding dynamism of God’s love in the world.
The alternative, then, is to live “in time”… to dedicate sufficient attention to understand that we are on the Potter’s wheel, continually being fashioned and refashioned for a deeper love, for a deepening of God’s life in us.
What shall this day and our current time make of us?
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