life on planet earth on Timekeeping

Did you know that the first group of people to use clocks were Christian monks? Monks desired the ability to pray around a rigorous and exact prayer schedule. Benedict of Nursia, the great architect o...

Spiritual timekeeping is nourished by Jesus’s promise that the Spirit will guide us into all truth across time… This stands in contrast to what I’ll call the “primitivism” of so much American Christia...

When mechanical clocks began to spring up in town squares across Europe, the line between keeping time and keeping control blurred further.

This may seem like a simple question, but there are many ways to answer it: my phone tells me it’s 6:18 a.m.; the calendar tells me it’s May 25; my prayer book tells me it’s the thirty-fifth day of Ea...

William F. Allen, who in 1883 “pulled off a miracle.” What he did was to get not just an entire coast to pull in sync, but an entire nation. In [New Jersey Governor Tom] Kean’s words, Until high noo...

Westerners have watches, Africans have time.

Our 24/7 culture conveniently provides every good and service we want, when we want, how we want. Our time – saving devices, technological conveniences, and cheap mobility have seemingly made life muc...

Keeping time with the Spirit is less a regimental march—left, right, left, right! ad infinitum—and more like a subtle dance, a responsive feel for what comes next. Lionel Salter offers a parallel in h...

Everything has its time and the main thing is that we keep in step with God and do not keep pressing on a few steps ahead-nor keep dawdling a few steps behind.

Our time is calibrated to a notion of efficiency that, in a single gesture, both demonizes waiting and preys on it as the opportune moment to occupy our attention.

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity

Part of our experience of waiting is cultural, and how time elapses while we wait can vary from person to person and context to context. We wait differently and we have different expectations that are...

Time has no divisions to mark its passage; there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins, it is only we mortals wh...

Time is the rider that breaks youth.

The future orientation of Christian time reminds us that we are people on the way. It allows us to live in the present as an alternative people, patiently waiting for what is to come, but never giving...

Learn to master time, and you will be able—whatever you do, whatever the stress, in the storm, in tragedy, or simply in the confusion in which we continuously live—to be still, immobile in the present...

Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.

Time is a relentless river. It rages on, a respecter of no one.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Gracious God, when I think of how you created all things in a step-by-step manner, I am reminded of my own impatience. There are so many times, Lord, when I want you to move at my pace, not yours. I c...

Our time is a precious gift that will be multiplied only when it is corralled by the good story of the gospel.

In the last class I taught at Regent, an obviously irritated young woman came up to me and said, “Dr. Peterson, three times during your lecture you did not say anything for twenty seconds. I know beca...

When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.

Of course, speed has a role in the workplace. A deadline can focus the mind and spur us on to perform remarkable feats. The trouble is that many of us are permanently stuck in deadline mode, leaving l...

We must use time creatively.

We all know our world has sped up to a frenetic pace. We feel it in our bones, not to mention on the freeway. But it hasn’t always been this way. Let me nerd out on you for a few minutes just to show...

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...