A Matter of Time

I own an auto glass company in Mena, Arkansas, and two or three times a week, I get up early and drive one hundred miles to pick up windshields and auto glass. There are no suppliers who will deliver to Mena, but there is a company that delivers to DeQueen. I rent a storage unit in DeQueen, and my supplier delivers to my storage unit and I drive to DeQueen early in the morning to load my truck and be back in Mena in time to open my business.

On the mornings that I pick up my auto glass order, the alarm rings at 4:30 am; I never worry about the alarm going off. My cell phone knows what time it is and always wakes me up, even if the electricity has been off during the night. But it hasn't always been so easy to measure time.

Since Creation, we have measured time by observing the natural world. Ancient men watched the change of the seasons and tracked the heavenly bodies across the sky. In Genesis 1:4, God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years."

Thousands of years ago, men and women in what is now central Europe tracked the moon and stars by carving notches into mammoth tusks. From Stonehenge to Mayan Temples to the ancient Chinese Observatory at Shanxi, ancient people used these structures to observe the sun and use it to mark the different seasons of the year.

The measurement of time began with the invention of sundials in ancient Egypt before 1500 B.C. The time the Egyptians measured was not the same as today's clocks measure. For the Egyptians, the basic unit of time was daylight. They broke the period from sunrise to sunset into twelve equal parts, giving us the forerunner of today's hours. As a result, the Egyptian hour was not a constant length of time, as is the case today; instead, as one-twelfth of the daylight period, it varied with the length of the day. So, summer hours were longer than winter hours. Time wasn't able to be measured during the hours of darkness.

The need to measure time independently of the sun eventually gave rise to various devices, most notably sandglasses, waterclocks, and candles. Though their accuracy was never great, these devices provided a way to measure time without the need for the sun to be visible. 

For most of history, ordinary people did not have regular and easy access to any time measuring device whatsoever, other than to glance at the sky on a sunny day and see where the sun was. For them, time, as we understand it today, did not exist. Mechanical timepieces existed as far back as 1000 A.D. By the 14th century, public clocks appeared across Europe. Between 1371 and 1380, public clocks were introduced in over 70 European cities. These clocks were not very accurate. Christiaan Huygens made the first pendulum clock in 1656. His timepiece had an error of less than 1 minute a day, and his later refinements reduced his clock's errors to less than 10 seconds a day.

With accurate clocks, people could correlate their activities to a far greater degree. The ability to measure time mathematically helped prepare the way for the scientific revolution. During the 16th and 17th centuries, people's lives began to be influenced by mechanical time. Most of the population would continue to look to the sun to tell the (approximate) time, but the clocks provided the definitive time. 

Time measurement was still haphazard well into the 19th century, with time being kept differently in each community. In the United States, there were over 140 local times in 1883, resulting in slight time differences between adjacent towns and cities. Around this time, influential business leaders, politicians, and scientists wanted to replace the world's impossible patchwork of local times with a universal system of territorial mean times. At the 1884 Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., diplomats envisioned a world divided into 24 zones, each with a single mean time determined by astronomers at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The world was beginning to get a handle on standardized time.

But it still wasn't easy to coordinate with Greenwich Mean Time. One enterprising London family had a solution. Every Monday, Ruth Belville stood at the entryway of a London watchmaker. Ruth was in the unusual business of selling time with her watch named Arnold. When the door opened, the storekeeper greeted the weekly visitor with "good morning, Miss Belleville; how is Arnold today." Ruth replied, "good morning. Arnold is one-tenth of a second fast." Then she reached into her handbag, grabbed a pocket watch, and passed it to the watchmaker. He used it to check the store's central clock and then returned the pocket watch to her.

Once a week, Ruth would get up early and take the three-hour journey from her cottage west of London to the Greenwich Royal Observatory, reaching its gate by 9:00 am. She rang the bell and was greeted by the gate orderly, who formally invited her inside. There she would hand over her watch, Arnold, to an attendant. The officials compared Arnold to the observatory master clock, then returned the timepiece to Ruth with a certificate stating the difference between its time and their central clock. Ruth walked to the Thames and caught a ferry to London with the official document in her hand. She then began making the rounds, visiting her customers.

The Belville family fell into this business accidentally. In the 1830s, Ruth's father, John Belleville, worked at the Greenwich Observatory as a meteorologist and astronomer. The observatory leadership grew frustrated by the many interruptions caused by local astronomers desperate to know the precise time for their observational work. Instead of having unannounced visitors coming to the Observatory and disrupting their scientific activities, they devised a plan to bring the time to those who needed it. They gave John Belville the task of providing time to nearly 200 customers.

Each morning, John went to Greenwich Observatory and set his watch, a very accurate timepiece he nicknamed Arnold, to Greenwich Mean Time. He would then set off in his buggy and set the clocks correctly for clients subscribed to the service. The watch he called Arnold was formerly known as John Arnold number 485 and named after its maker. It was a highly accurate pocket watch built in the late 1700s. John Arnold originally designed Number 485 as a gift for the Duke of Sussex. The Duke thought the timepiece was too large and refused it. The watch ended up at the Greenwich Observatory.

John Belville continued this service until he died in 1856. His widow, Maria, continued the business until her retirement in 1892, when she was in her eighties. Ruth Belville then took over the business. She continued the business until 1940. Ruth was in her eighties when she retired. At 86, Ruth could still make the twelve-mile journey and arrive at the Observatory by 9 am.

When Ruth and Arnold were retiring from the time business, a clock was installed in the United States that consistently drew a crowd. In 1939, New Yorkers headed downtown to get the precise time at 195 Broadway in Manhattan. The art deco clock sat in the window of the AT&T corporate headquarters. It was not just any clock; it was the most accurate public clock in the world. A unique piece of quartz crystal provided its accuracy. Every day, hundreds of pedestrians stopped in front of the clock and held their fingers on their watch stem, waiting for the sweeping second hand to reach the top so they could set their watch accurately. Quartz clocks and watches were sold in large quantities during the 1970s when technological advances made them affordable.

But before long, there were even more accurate clocks. Lord Kelvin first suggested using atomic transitions to measure time in 1879. Louis Essen and Jack Parry built the first accurate atomic clock in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K. Atomic clocks are highly accurate, with an error of only 1 second in one hundred million years. Today we can all have the accuracy of an atomic clock by purchasing a clock that automatically synchronizes itself to the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. I have one in my home, and you probably do too.

Why do we place such emphasis on measuring time? Some 200 years ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Dost thou love time? Then use time wisely, for that's the stuff that life is made of." Being able to measure time helps us to use it wisely. Because of the fragile nature of time, Moses prayed, "So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart." Psalm 90:12 (NRSV) That is another way of saying it is the use, not the length, of our days that counts.

Ephesians 5:15-17 reads,  "Consider carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise people, but as wise people. Make the most of your time, because the days are evil. For this reason, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is." These verses seem to be in the back of my mind a lot. Maybe it's because I feel guilty for spending too much time on the Internet or watching T.V. Obviously, these words apply to everyone. We will all be held accountable for the way we spend the precious time God has given us, but I feel like these words have special meaning for me.

In a prayer of Moses recorded in Psalms 90, we find this plea, "Teach us to use wisely all the time we have." How can we use our time wisely? Let me suggest four steps I have found helpful.

ONE – Look at each day as a gift from God. Instead of seeing each day as a burden, see it as another opportunity God has given you to serve Him. Time isn't inexhaustible, nor can we assume we'll always have more; someday, our time on earth will end. The psalmist said, "My times are in your hands" Psalm 31:15. The first thing we should do when we awake is to thank God for the gift of another day.

TWO -- Commit your time to God. God gave it to you: not to be wasted or mishandled, but to be used for His glory. We are accountable to Him for how we use our time, and once a minute passes, it can never be reclaimed. How can we put this into action? Ask God to help us schedule our time more wisely and efficiently. It may mean rethinking how we spend our time and adjusting it to reflect God's priorities. We may also need to examine why we're so busy. Is what we are doing necessary – or are we simply trying to impress others? We can't do everything -- sometimes, we need to say no.

THREE -- Set aside time for God and others. No Christian would say, "I'm too busy for God," but how often have you gone through a whole day without thinking about Him? How often have you ignored someone who needed your encouragement or help? Why is this? One reason is that we relegate God to our spare time – but never have any spare time! In other words, we mentally list everything we must do and put God at the bottom of the list. But the opposite should be the case. Jesus said, "more than anything else, put God's work first and do what he wants. Then the other things will be yours as well." Matthew 6:33 (CEV) 

FOUR -- Take time for your own needs. We all need rest and recreation; God made us this way. Some people feel guilty if they take a vacation or even a few hours off, but they shouldn't. During a hectic schedule, Jesus told His disciples, "Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile." He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn't even have time to eat. Mark 6:31 (NLT) If Jesus required rest, don't we also? Someone chronically exhausted from lack of sleep is much more susceptible to Satan's attacks.

I want to close today with a story. The winter day was cold, and even though it was freezing outside, a crowd was gathering. You could feel the anticipation in the air. A young man named Louis was standing in the crowd. He was so excited that he could hardly contain himself. He thought that he might witness history in the making.

The newspapers had been speculating about the event. They questioned whether a man could go that fast on land and survive. They wondered if the vehicle could go that fast without falling to pieces. Everybody seemed to have an opinion; engineers, scientists, doctors, and the man in the street. Today was the day that the questions would all be answered. Louis was excited that he was going to see it.

A gasp rose from the crowd when the machine was introduced. Louis had never seen such an incredible machine. It looked like it was from the future. He watched the driver get into the machine. He couldn't believe what he was witnessing. Louis felt the ground shake when the engine in the machine roared to life. Soon the machine took off, accelerating to an unbelievable speed. Louis and everyone else watching were amazed by how fast the machine went.

When the demonstration was over, both the machine and the driver were fine. When it was announced that a new world speed record had been set, the crowd cheered. The machine had just reached the speed of 39 miles an hour. Wow! That doesn't seem very impressive today. If somebody ahead of us on the highway is creeping along at 39 miles per hour, we're ready to pitch a fit and scream, "Let's go, come on! I don't have all day."

But back in 1898, the world was amazed when somebody went 39 miles per hour. Can you imagine what Louis would think of the latest record for land speed, set by a jet-powered car blasting across the Black Rock Desert in Nevada at more than 763 miles per hour? And, of course, it's only a matter of time before someone will break that record.

In this modern world, no matter how fast we get, no matter how efficient we become, it's just never enough. There's just no question about it; we're doing things faster and faster and faster, at speeds our ancestors couldn't even imagine. Even though we're moving at speeds that our ancestors would think were miraculous, even supernatural, most people still complain about the same thing. No matter what we do or how fast we do it, the complaint is always the same. We don't have enough time.

That's a problem God anticipated. Thousands of years ago, God gave us a commandment specifically created to protect us from the tyranny of time. If you study the fourth commandment, you'll find it comes to us right from the opening chapters of the Bible, right in the story of Creation. At the beginning of our human history, the Lord carved out a refuge called the Sabbath.

Let's go back to the beginning, right after God created the world. The Bible says in Genesis 2:1-3, "Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made."

The Sabbath is good news because it gives you this block of time that can be dedicated to God and to the people you love. Shaun Boonstra of The Voice of Prophecy says that "to devote one-seventh of our lives to rest is just as much a commandment of God as the prohibitions against murder, adultery or stealing." With the Sabbath, God is giving us a special place in time, a sacred place, where the things of this world—our job, the bills, the chores—are not allowed to intrude because this is a sacred and holy time.

I ask you today, is the Sabbath a day of rest for you? That is what God designed it to be. He was afraid you would forget, so he said to remember the Sabbath day. Remember that God wants to spend time with you. Remember that he wants you to spend time with your family. Remember that God wants you to take the time to rest from your work and your worries. Hebrews 4:9-11 says, "So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Anyone who enters God's rest will rest from his work as God did. So let us do our best to enter that rest."