The Clock is Ticking

Whenever a deadline approaches, the clocks seem to tick louder. I am aware as I write this that I am writing to a disappearing generation. Today’s watches and clocks don’t tick; they just switch digitally minute to minute in silence.

Time is running out – another antiquated allusion to the hour glass which has given way to digital stop watches.

I once stayed in a home where chiming clocks graced every staircase, landing and virtually every room. Of course they were not synched so they all marked time to their own inner workings. That pretty much drove me crazy and contributed to the insomnia I was suffering from. I would hear the clock on the stairs strike in a very pretty tune every 15 minutes throughout the night, which panicked me into the thought that I needed to be asleep before it went again. Then the one downstairs would go at a different interval, and the one echoing up from the living room also chimed its heart out whenever it reached the hour.

We have a lovely grandfather clock tick-tocking away in the hall way, and it is the best of all worlds. In the years when it sat silent (because of its proximity to my bedroom!) it lost its voice. So, although it marks the minutes, it has no ability to strike the hour. I hear the peaceful throb of the minutes but miss the driving rhythm of the hours.

Thoreau wrote somewhere that we all walk to a different beat. How sad it would be were we all to be synched to the same personality or character or even ambition. Our God is a creative God who delights in making each individual completely different. And yet, somehow the same. 

May we rejoice in diversity today, and celebrate our similarities. May we walk and sit and breathe in peace, calmed by a steady rhythm but not driven by a clanging gong. And to God be the glory.