Senior Pastor's Ponderings...
Did you know that in 2014 a new product called Tikker was introduced? It’s a wrist-watch that counts down your life so you can make every second count. When it was introduced, it boasted thousands of preorders. The Tikker allows you to watch as a dot-matrix screen displays the seconds you have left on earth as they disappear down a black hole. Your estimated time of death is, of course, just that – an estimate.
The Tikker uses an algorithm like the one used by the federal government to figure a person’s life expectancy and then converts that into a countdown of the years, months, days, minutes, and seconds you have left on this earth. The effect is sobering, a sort of incessant grim reaper reminding you that time is running out.
Tikker’s inventor is a 37 year old Swede named Fredrik Colting. He says he invented the gadget not as a morbid novelty item, but as an earnest attempt to change his own thinking. Colting, a former gravedigger, said, “The occurrence of death is no surprise to anyone, but in our modern society we rarely talk about it. I think that if we were more aware of our expiration I’m sure we’d make better choices while we are alive.” That’s why he calls Tikker the happiness watch. It’s his belief that watching your life slip away will remind you to savor life while you have it.
The late Steve Jobs said to the 2005 graduating class at Stanford: “For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’”
The Bible has a lot to say about time. Our time is finite. It is limited. It flourishes like grass in the morning and in the evening it is cut down. The most famous passage in the Bible about time is Ecclesiastes 3 – there is a time for everything. . .a time to live and a time to die. . .a time to laugh and a time to cry. . .a time to plant and a time to harvest.
A timely response is required in life. Gandhi said, “I am a man of action, not of academia.” Bertrand Russell observed that the central problem of our age is to act decisively in the absence of certainty.
As we have been hearing the Gospel of St. Matthew on Sunday mornings, we are being invited to act decisively for the kingdom. Have you taken up the invitation to “get out of the boat and walk on the water?” --- +PD