Readers of a certain age (ahem, ahem), might remember the 1983 Cyndi Lauper song Time after Time. The song has been swirling around in my head lately as my oldest started at university this month.
“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me. Time after time. If you fall, I will catch you, I’ll be waiting. Time after time” was the catchy chorus of the hit song. I can’t say I’m a big fan of Lauper’s, but there’s something about these lyrics that echo our relationship with our children and with God, as his children. The phrase “time after time” implies an eternal component. Parents usually, and God, certainly, will always be there to come home to. We can depend on God’s love, time after time.
I distinctly remember looking at my firstborn child shortly after she was born and being eager for her to grow bigger and develop her personality. She was a beautiful baby, but I wanted to know who she was going to be. I wanted to speed up time. In my impatience, I wanted to know what she would talk about when she could talk, what kind of foods she would choose to eat, what she would want to be when she grows up.
Now, here we are, almost 18 years later, and I know all these things – she talks about animals, music, and all things police-related. She loves hamburgers and tea and she wants to be an RCMP officer.
The answers came a lot faster than I expected, and I find myself asking the question we all ask at various points in our lives, “Where did the time go?” I now find myself regretting those moments of trying to live in my child’s future instead of relishing the beauty of her babyness. In fact I’ve made a point to better enjoy each subsequent babyhood. That precious time I had with my first would have been better spent praying that she would make good decisions with the time God gives her on this earth. I should have been relishing the presence of God in her at each present moment.
God already knows what we will do with the time he gives us. That doesn’t mean that we are predestined to make the choices we make, because God created us with free will and always respects our free will. But God sees the whole picture of time and eternity, while we can only observe the past, live in the moment, and plan for the future. We need to make good choices with the time we are given.
In the Sept. 20 Gospel passage from Matthew 20:1-16, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to the landowner who hires labourers to work in his vineyard first thing in the morning. He gets more workers around 9 a.m., some at noon, then more at 3 p.m., and even brings in a new group at 5 p.m. to work the last hour of the day. The kicker is that the landowner pays each group the same daily wage, much to the ire of the workers who were there all day.
This is a perfect example of how God sees time. He does not count hours and minutes, like we do. He’s not up in heaven tapping his divine watch impatiently waiting for us to finally clue into his plan. He is constantly, day and night, waiting for us to respond to his invitation, to enter into a relationship with him. Whether we respond early or late, the important thing is that we respond. He is there, “time after time.”
We can all be so good at wasting time, but it helps to try to view time as God views time. First of all, it’s a gift from him. Secondly, we have no idea how much of it we have. We’ve all known people “taken before their time,” as the saying goes, but in God’s eyes that was the time he gave them on this earth.
No matter how much time we are given, we are all invited to work in the vineyard. It’s up to us whether or not we will enter into that working relationship with the Master. I like to remind my kids, though I think it’s actually a reminder for myself, that we will someday have to account for all the time we’ve been given. Did we choose, too often, to spend it in anger, frivolity, or complaint? Or did we spend those infinitely valuable seconds working for God’s glory?
St. Padre Pio (1887-1968), whose feast day is Sept. 23, was a humble, prayerful Italian Capuchin Franciscan friar and popular confessor who had some wise words about time. “Oh, how precious time is! Blessed are those who know how to make good use of it. Oh, if only all could understand how precious time is, undoubtedly everyone would do his best to spend it in a praiseworthy manner!”
I look at my grown daughter heading to her first university classes, and I look at my youngest, my 4-year-old daughter who mimics her oldest sister in so many ways. I know time is a treasure, too precious to be spent living in the future or the past. We can spend time thinking of the things we have done, or haven’t done, the “what ifs” and “should’ve beens,” but that’s not what God wants us to do with this glorious gift of time. We need to take the advice of St. Padre Pio and make sure we spend time in “a praiseworthy manner.”
Spend time in prayer. Spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Spend time in the confessional. Spend 15 minutes contemplating the life of Jesus while saying the Rosary. Spend time with your children playing, cooking, eating, dreaming, and praying with them. Spend time expressing God’s love to those around you. Spend time evangelizing, being a witness to the world of God’s mercy. Spend time reading God’s word and letting it shape your life. Spend time asking God what it is he wants you to do this day. Spend time gazing at that baby in your arms, thanking God for the incredible gift of that new life and praying for that new soul to get to heaven someday.
Cyndi Lauper may have turned time into a catchy tune almost 40 years ago, but when God created the world he gave us the precious gift of time so we can know and love him, time after time.
Lazzuri writes from her home in Nova Scotia, where she lives with her husband, six children, and her mom.
