Dear Friends,
It felt really good to type that number: 2021. The turn of a calendar is interesting. It seems completely irrational to think that a new month and year means anything. Everything going on in the world yesterday is still going on today; reality doesn’t seem to care whether it is December 2020 or January 2021. Time just marches on; what difference could it possibly make what we call it? Trump still Tweets, COVID still kills, and the government keeps on printing money.
So far, common sense. But you know what? There is a hidden assumption deep in that “obvious” common sense reasoning: calendars are arbitrary psychological and sociological human inventions that have no effect or “purchase” on reality. That’s an assumption that makes sense if you hold to a particular kind of modern worldview: that the universe is really at bottom a random, meaningless place and we human beings are just play-acting with all our high-minded philosophy and culture and technology. Time is fundamentally an autonomous, impersonal, and meaningless tick-tick-tick and we humans play a cute game of projecting or imposing meaning on it. And, thus, a calendar is an arbitrary projection; it’s all in our heads.
What if the universe isn’t like that at all? What if time is inherently meaningful? What if calendars are mapping and expressing something not just about our psychological states of mind, but something true about the actual world? What if the divisions of hours, days, years, and ages are full of significance? That’s what the Bible teaches, as a matter of fact, beginning in its very first chapter. God divides light and darkness and then names them “day” and “night.” He sets rulers over them, “sun” and “moon.” God’s creative work displays a division of labor spread out over six days, and is then followed by a day of rest. The fact that this very pattern continues to govern our own weeks in the 21st century ought to suggest that time and its division is anything but arbitrary. The French revolutionaries tried to dispose of it in 1793 in their attempt to scrub theology from literally everything, but it was something of a disaster.
In a biblical view of things, time has structure and meaning from the very beginning. It seems to me, by the way, that this is the kernel of truth at which paganism gestures in its various time-related projects: Astrology’s Zodiac, horoscopes, and so forth. The truth is that because God created it, time is inherently a “calendared” thing—each moment, minute, day, month, year, century, and age has meaning because it is the unfolding of his providential and redemptive plans.
The Bible is constantly reminding us of our orientation with respect to time: remember the the mighty deeds of old! Look forward in hope to the fulfillment of promises in the future! God is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. He orders ancient Israel’s life around a liturgy: on such and such a day of such and such a month, “you shall….” The Apostle Paul tells the pagans in Athens that, “from one man,” God “made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26).
Does time have meaning? Are calendars expressing something real about the world? You’d better believe it! Look no further than the date in the title of this newsletter: “A.D.” 2021. Anno Domini. “In the Year of Our Lord.” Our calendars are marked with an absolute objective reality: we are privileged to live under the reign of Jesus Christ, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
If you woke up this morning and thought, it’s just another day, nothing changed just because a calendar date changed, then you are succumbing to a kind of fatalism. And that is exactly what pagan notions of time produce: that sense of utter helplessness in the face of the impersonal and inexorable movement of time, that meaningless tick-tick-tick. On the contrary, we are not governed by the relentless march of impersonal, uncaring time; we are governed by Jesus Christ, the arche (beginning) and telos (end), Alpha & Omega, the Lord of time and history. We have every reason to boldly pray, to hope, to believe, and to expect that 2021 will be different—and better!—than 2020.
We have a living Lord, and the King cares about our calendars.
Miscellany
It’s New Year’s Day, so the teenagers in our house (two + a guest) are having a Lord of the Rings marathon. It is particularly impressive because they are watching, as well they should, Peter Jackson’s extended versions. Each of the three films is basically four hours, so it is quite the investment. If you’ve never seen the extended versions, you really should; in many ways, they’re just different films than the theatrical versions. They’re better. It was a complete labor of love for Jackson and his team to fully finish (audio, color) an impressive amount of material that had hit the cutting room floor, and I’m grateful he did it! Say what you will about those films; you cannot deny that they accomplished something pretty special.
We had a really nice outing this week to the mountains. I fished this hole for a bit, but not for long. It was really cold.
We also saw a beautiful Bald Eagle, and a nice herd of Bighorn sheep. I didn’t get good pictures of that, but I found it pretty amusing that the herd was literally on a hillside directly above a sign that reads, “Bighorn Sheep Winter Range.” Wildlife doesn’t usually cater to us so conveniently.
Senator Ben Sasse is a leader we don’t deserve. Please read his comments on the continuing “stolen election” kerfuffle and take it to heart.
Finally, if you’re the kind of person looking to make and keep New Year’s resolutions, enjoy this classic counseling advice from Bob Newhart: