GMT in 2024
Midnight. Looking at your clock? Bong… A New Year chimes. Time past and time present. We use time ‘all the time’. Bong… For instance, we make ‘demands’ on our time. Or, we ‘make time’ for people we want to see. Bong… We say, people ‘buy time’ or ‘spend time’. We ‘invest time’ or put ‘time aside’. We have ‘quality time’ and ‘wasted time’. Bong… We hate to lose ‘precious time’. For people we earnestly want to see, we ‘find time’. Bong… Where we can, we ‘save time’. Some say, time ‘is money’. Others, time ‘is too short’.
We read at midnight at Christmas, as BC became AD, the beginning of John’s Gospel the Word became flesh and dwelt with us.. Paraphrased we might put it – ‘although God is eternal, God chooses the constraints of space and time, to be with us, an occupant of our world’.
In the UK we govern ourselves by Greenwich mean time. The word ‘mean’ means ‘average’. It is the average of the sun reaching the highest point of the sky – what we call noon. There is a meridian line running through the Greenwich Royal Observatory in London. All time zones start from there.
However, Peter reminds people of faith, do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day… (2 Peter 3.8). So Peter and John are saying there is another GMT, bong, God’s Mean Time, a different way altogether that the ‘beloved’ see and use time.
Those using God’s Mean Time understand time, or life, to be a gift. Every moment God gives us is a gift. When God was born as a defenceless baby he was telling us how precious and vulnerable time was to God. When Jesus’ ministry had a bias to the poor, God hears the cry of the desperate and the desolate ‘how long, O Lord, how long?’ And when Christ offers up his life for us, we know we are called to offer our time too.
In these last 2,024 years God has gifted God’s mean time, GMT, to us. GMT is a gift we can give to each other. A gift we can offer to God. Precious time is not for rushing. Time belongs to God, and yes, we can give away our GMT time to others.
Happy New Year.
Baptisms in January
On 14th January 11am at Hartpury Church, Arthur James Forrester is baptised. Sister Ottilie, parents Jessie and James.
On 21st January 2pm at Corse Church, Nellie Grace Estop, mum is Alison.
We offer our prayers and congratulations to both families.