Tag: Zane

On Time

The art of time management is a very grown up thing. It is ultimately what distinguishes us as adults.

I suppose I have the same self awareness as I did in my earliest memories. But lately I’ve been feeling very grown up.

Perhaps it’s is because I have a mortgage now. A death pledge to pay a lot of money plus interest. There was a time when I would roll my eyes at stuffy grown ups who didn’t know how to loosen up and have fun. Now I wonder when silly young people are going to quit wasting time and get serious about life. I think there is a keener awareness of time that comes with age and gives older people the ability to be sharp and direct with words. I haven’t reached that point yet, but I can see it in the distance.

A lot things that adults have to do are not enjoyable, which is why a lot of people are reluctant to become adults. People who do not choose to evade responsibility are grown up. Responsibility often looks like a father working to provide for a family, a mother taking care of a home, a child taking care of a pet or a toy.

I think the main reason that I am feeling so grown up lately is because I am keenly aware that I cannot do everything that I would like simply because of time.

One of the greatest things about being a grown up is being a master of your own time. One could argue that working a job does not make one a master of their own time. I suppose that may be the case for many people, but I tend to look at time as currency that I can trade for resources to support my family.

The art of time management is a very grown up thing. It is ultimately what distinguishes us as adults. Time is the ultimate responsibility. How someone spends their time defines them. If you don’t believe this ask someone who is doing time.

How we treat time perhaps is more telling of our character than how we spend time. One could hardly deny that the irascible, impatient, reckless driver forcing his way through traffic like a Bull of Bashan has a concept of his own time, but a total disregard for the time, and indeed the life, of others. These people are bound by time, not masters of it. Frankly, they are not grown up.

There is chronological time, which is what most of us think about when we think of time. You can measure chronological time with the steady predictable ticking of a clock. We can think of this kind of time horizontally, like a timeline. And there is kairological time, which cannot be measured with a clock and could be thought of vertically. Heaven often operates on kairological time.

Jesus spoke of “The times and the seasons.” Chronos and Kairos. Acts 1:7

Kairological time is manifest when an unpredictable event comes and unapologetically crashes into chronological time. The birth of Jesus Christ, The Crucifixion, The Resurrection, and The Day of Pentecost are the most significant kairological events in the history of mankind. But kairological events are not limited to these. Every time the Word of God is preached there is potential for a kairological moment. Every time someone is filled with the gift of the Holy Ghost is a kairological moment.

The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. II Timothy 4:2.

Instant in season and out of season: Kairos and Chronos.

It is simpler to get a handle on chronological time. The whole world operates on chronological time. And how we handle it defines us as humans. But there is much less awareness of kairological time. The entire Cosmos operates on Kairological time. And how we handle it defines us as spiritual beings.

Voices

We endure a fool’s speech not because they have some wisdom to offer, but because they may say something so incredibly ridiculous that it becomes entertainment.

I am thinking this morning about voices.

There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification.

I Corinthians 14:10

I learned how to talk in a large extended family of loud talkers. So I acquired some of the critical communication skills necessary to be a successful boisterous politician just by going to my grandparent’s house once a week. There are two basic ways to get heard. The first tactic that you learn very young is how to talk someone down. At its basest essence, talking someone down means that you interrupt them and talk louder than them until they shut up and everyone starts listening to you. At its more refined nature it is the ability to successfully address an entire room.

“Zane, you ain’t never heard a story you didn’t think needed interrupting.”

Zach Wells

I admit, interrupting is a bad habit that I am actively trying to fix. But sometimes you must interrupt to rescue people from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. My Dad called these people blithering idiots. We’ve all been trapped in endless conversations-rather monologues- with people who don’t know how to be clear and concise. We’ve all needed to be freed by someone who isn’t afraid to talk them down. That’s how I justify interrupting anyway.

“We endure a fool’s speech not because they have some wisdom to offer, but because they may say something so incredibly ridiculous that it becomes entertainment.”

The second way to insure that you will be heard is to have something to say that is worth hearing. When you have something worth hearing, you won’t need to talk anyone down. There are people that can walk into a room and almost whisper and everyone will hush, straining to hear what is being said. These are the kind of voices that I have been thinking about.

But the world is full of all kinds of voices. Voices on the radio shows, podcasts, and blogs. Voices on YouTube, Twitter, FaceBook, and Instagram. Voices you only hear on infrequent phone calls. Voices from the pulpit. Voices on your TV. Voices in your college classrooms, discussion boards, textbooks. All competing with each other for our attention. It gets loud at times. Sometimes you need to take stock and silence some of those voices. But make sure you don’t silence the wrong voices.

From time to time I like to ask myself these questions:

What is the loudest voice in my life? What is the most significant voice in my life? What voices are in conflict? What voices are making me worry or angry? How did this voice make its way here?

I am thinking of my Dad’s voice. Although he’ll never again talk to me in the life, I still hear him loud and clear. I remember him preaching about Herod the Tetrarch, who had the head of John the Baptist presented on a platter. Hell tried to silence “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And when Jesus stood before Herod “he[Jesus] answered him nothing.”

You cannot silence the voice of the man of God and still expect to hear God’s voice.

Hell is still trying to silence the voice that cries “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” It’s an offensive thing preaching. It comes at us without regard to our feelings. It is an assault on our carnal nature. It is foolish, but “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” I Corinthians 1:21

Of all the voices in my life-and none of them without signification-I need most of all the voice of a preacher. And so do you. Please don’t silence the voice of the preacher in your life.

My Mind Goes Back

When I squint into the early morning Spring sun

my mind goes back to getting up before daylight

to work all day with my grandfather.

Not knowing what the day would bring.

I just showed up to work, with eyes fighting sleep and the sun to stay open.

When I smell freshly cut grass in the late afternoon shade

my mind goes back to playing softball in the back yard

with the whole family and half the neighborhood kids.

A celebration after sweating behind a push mower for half a day.

When I taste a handmade hamburger at some hole in the wall diner

where no one cares about the health score hanging on the wall,

 my mind goes back to being a kid and going somewhere with my dad.

Just me and dad.

I smile and think of him as I take a bite, he would have liked this.

When I hear hammer of diesel engine and smell it’s aromatic exhaust

my mind goes back to working odd jobs on construction sites with my older brother.

Dust is flying in the air and the sun is going down or coming up.

We worked all day.

When I hear the cawing of a crow breaking the still, clean air on a cold fall morning

my mind takes me back to the quiet frosty cotton fields behind the house.

When I drive on a rough neglected back road,

my mind goes back to the river loop.

Now I’m on the way to the boat launch with Zach and Dad.

Or on the way home from the tiny Chinese buffet across the river with the whole family.

When I smell years of stale cigarette smoke in a time capsule house from the 50s my mind goes back to my grandmother Ida Lang’s.

When a familiar musty smell escapes as I open an old book in some quiet bookstore, my mind goes back to laying in the floor reading through the ancient encyclopedias.

When I hear just about any song my mind goes back to first time that I heard it.

Some songs have a stronger memory attached to them.

And yet, sometimes my mind goes back on it’s own.

A feeling that’s hard to explain.

Sometimes I think I go back to a place that I never was, and when I get there, I am sad because I was not there the first time.

There are places that my mind takes me back that I don’t want to go.

Then there are places that my mind can’t take me.

Ah, but other times,

my mind goes forward.