Christmas and Time...

Christmas is such a time of conflicting "time" sensations for me. When the stores first start displaying Christmas merchandise before Halloween, my mind says "No, it's way too early!" But secretly, I'm a little happy to see it there. Then, after Halloween, it seems more dignified to have the decorations start to show up in the stores and it doesn't even seem quite out of place to begin humming Christmas carols. I start making Christmas cards and I am ready, even anxious for the Christmas season to be in full swing.

A few weeks later Thanksgiving comes and goes and the season officially "begins", at least at our house. We put up our tree and decorate the house, packages begin to get wrapped and those Christmas cards get mailed. I have the illusion that I am ahead of schedule for Christmas. Then we get to this point in the holidays, with ten or twelve days to go and I suddenly feel like Christmas has catapulted through the calendar. I seem to be taken unawares and whatever fantasy I had about being ahead of schedule is now dashed on the rocks of reality. Somehow I feel that I haven't spent as much time as I should enjoying our Christmas tree, or watching those Christmas movies that we like or spending time doing "Christmasy" things with my family.

Then Christmas Eve is here and I hope I have everything for dinner the next day, and I hope I have everything for the stockings and that I have remembered where I have hidden all the presents so I can put them under the tree. Christmas morning comes and in a blur it is gone. Before we know it the tree is barren underneath, the stockings are empty and our dinner has been consumed. Christmas celebration is over.

It makes me think about eternity. The Scriptures tell us that in eternity there is no time as we know it today. No hurry, no rush, no waiting, no delay, no alarm clock, no watches, no timers. A celebration in eternity -- the marriage supper of the Lamb, for example -- would be as real to us in a thousand years as it was the moment it happened. Everything would have the perfect perception of eventfulness. And everything wil have the perfect perception of satisfaction because Christ will be the satisfaction of every desire. He is all in all and at that time we will know that clearly, while here, we only see through a glass darkly. We see everything now through a filter...maybe the face of a clock.