Time is sacred, let today's crossover moment find you in your right mind

Christopher Wekoye launches fireworks at Line Saba in Kibra, Nairobi, on January 1, 2023. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

There is something sacred about time.  This sacred sense is especially amplified at the end of the year, which is simultaneously the beginning of a new year. Something confronts us deep within us, reminding us we did not get ourselves here. This fact is hard to fight.

As the clock strikes midnight, there is a chime within us that reminds us of the Giver of Time. The life we have we has been given and the far we have come we have been helped.  Nothing in our success or failure takes credit for the manoeuvre past the gates of the old year and through the gates of the new year.

Our marks did not make the cut-off points. We should have been denied entry at the New Year gates and deported from the zone of another chance. No one sent the other a pin to this location. But we find ourselves standing here – a prayer on our lips and hope in our hearts. 

We are as they in a wedding banquet but missed out on the dress code memo. Graciously, the host orders that we stay anyway.  The axe is rightly at the foot of the tree. But the gardener postpones the cut – believing that with a little more tending, we will be worth our place in the garden.

More time 

Some people launch negotiations at spiritual frequencies seeking more time to live. When a request like “sun stand still” is honored, it partly means that some assignments are so critical that even when the clock says the match is over, the Referee says “play on!”  This to the displeasure of the opposing team of course!  Others have longed for a shortening of life by seeking acceleration of their end but their desire is not granted. 

Of all “time’s up” indicators, age is the most telling.  An age comes and one knows it is about time and “the way of the world” is near.  Dying when old is contradicted by babies who only know womb light and never make to see day light. Others see the light of day too briefly and exit before they know its name.  Just before you conclude that good people live long, a young person who was so good yet died young comes to mind.

While still pondering on that, an evil person who lived long enough to terrorise more than a few people comes to memory. This is meaningless – no one can track the logic that time uses to extend or terminate the life of mortals. Sometimes time is too strange and other times too beautiful to understand. Time runs life in ways above us. But it must be above us for it to contain us!

Time serves but it is not a servant. Time does not take instructions from humans. It is like the wind and has a mind of its own. Minutes and hours are orderly but how time shares those units out is a mutating complex equation. Time is not your servant.  It is you who owes your life to time. If time was your servant, you would dictate its ebb and flow.  But time is not at anyone’s beck and call. Not even the greatest in the world can command time.  Even great time keepers own not even the smallest unit of time. Time keepers are not merchants of time – they are managers of it. They need the time to keep!

From the beginning, time is sequenced in the sun and its celestial children.  Somehow, the sun did not just put boundaries to the day but drove out darkness with the celebrated effect “and there was light.”  The sun’s presence is connected first to light then to time. We miss out on this precious insight when we hurry and understand the sun as a marker of time. Time has its purpose – light. This light is understood in the context of driving out darkness. That way, even in darkness, it must shine. Though darkness comes, the light still shines even when the sun goes down!  Therefore, do not think only in terms of the time you live. Critically, think about the light your time has shone. Do not think of your life only in terms of time, think of time in terms of light. Time is measured in light units.

Time may be money but money is not time! One rich fool had money lines filled to capacity ferrying deposits to his bank account. But his time lines were suddenly shut off.  Money lines full. Time lines off. End of story. It takes more than money to keep time lines open.  Time and light are intertwined.  Light is in time and time is for light.

Adam and Eve were enveloped in darkness and needed light to make their time resume sense. The light did come in the form of God’s forgiveness. That is what time is for – ferrying light into the darkness within and the darkness without.  Light is the heartbeat of time. Light makes time necessary.  Time ferries light to everywhere light needs to shine – even in the darkness.  In ferrying light, time has light as its life. Light is the reason for time.

Giver of Time

So do not just take up time. Honor it. Do not just walk into it. Bow daily and thank the Giver of Time. The Son of God is the people’s Sun. This Giver of Time is also the Light of the World. The New Year finds you in your world.

The point of the time rolled out to you every morning is to light that world – more and more. Make it better and better brighter and brighter.  And remember, you do not have all the time in the world. There is a timeless world ahead.

Before you “bong” your way into mistiness; before you drink yourself to the pond;  before you pass out into your pleasure cup; before you speed yourself to a crash at the New Year gates, think again. Time has an undeniable sacredness that demands and deserves your honour and regard.  Let the crossover moment find you in your right mind.  Not being sober at such a high time implies that time is not worth your sobriety. That is not the best of starts.