WHAT KIND OF TIME

For the Hebrews in the Old Testament, to know the time was not a matter of knowing the date or the hour, it was a matter of knowing what kind of time it might be. Was it a time for tears or a time for laughter, a time to plant or a time to harvest what was planted? To misjudge the time in which one lived might prove to be disastrous. To continue to mourn and fast during a time of blessing would be like sowing during harvest time. Time was the quality, or mood, of events.

We speak in a similar way with generalization of time by defining something as good times, or bad times, hard times, modern times, post-modern times, war time, etc. We say time is ripe for something or that an enterprise has no future. Here time is not a measurement any more, it is a quality of what is happening, the quality of our experience.

The moment we think of history we return to our concept of quantitative time. We locate ourselves by a time line of what is past and behind us and the future and what is ahead of us. The Jew of ancient times did not locate himself anywhere; he located events, places and times and saw himself on a journey past these fixed points. He and his ancestors and successors share the same time no matter how many intervening years there may happen to be in between them.

“It is we who are passing when we say time passes,” wrote the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941)

“My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.” Jesus