It's About Time

By Wendy A. Jones I am not an avid 60 Minutes watcher, but I will admit to hearing that dang stopwatch in my head whenever I am pressed for time.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock

Bus is coming in ten minutes. Lunches? Check. Coats? Check. Shoes? Rats, where are your shoes, Zack? Hurry! The bus is going to be here!

The sink backs up. The toilet overflows. Approximately 8,000 Legos are on the floor. My visiting teachers are coming in five minutes. Hurry! Clean it up!

The alarm goes off. I hit the snooze button. The alarm goes off again. That wasn't nine minutes! I look at the clock. Hurry! Time to get the kids up!

Yesterday, one of my friends on Facebook posed a question about alarm clocks in heaven. He was pretty sure there would be lots of them in hell.

I've been thinking on the subject of 'time' for a couple of weeks now. I had been studying section 88 in the Doctrine and Covenants (which I have read many times since it's one of my favorite sections) at the part where it talks about the signs of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the Millenium. I came across verse 110: "And so on, until the seventh angel shall sound his trump; and he shall stand forth upon the land and upon the sea, and swear in the name of him who sitteth upon the throne, that there shall be time no longer; and Satan shall be bound, that old serpent, who is called the devil, and shall not be loosed for the space of a thousand years."

I finished and thought, "Whoa. Wait a minute. Time no longer? Why haven't I ever noticed that before?"

In cross-referencing, I found this in Alma 40:8. "Now whether there is more than one time appointed for men to rise it mattereth not; for all do not die at once, and this mattereth not; all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men."

I've felt those phrases turning in my brain: time no longer and time is only measured unto men. For some reason, I thought about flying kites.

My kids and I love to fly kites. I remember this day in particular, about a year ago, where we went to the park near our neighborhood on one of the first sunny days of the year and flew this shark kite.

I remember stopping the fun, packing it in, because we had to be somewhere.

And as I thought about time and what it meant for time to be no longer, I realized that children are much better at forgetting time than adults. My kids would have flown kites for hours if I had let them.

Yes, someone needs to be responsible. Yes, for right now time is here and is an integral part of life.

But.

But.

Too often I find myself allowing time to rob me of the joy of the moment. I'm not enjoying the kite flying, I'm checking my watch and thinking, "Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes and then I'll give the five minute warning, five minutes to pack up, five minutes to drive home, that will leave 1/2 hour to get dinner ready before we eat and go to . . . "

I have vowed to myself to stop doing that. (It's one of those easier-said-than-done things, I'm sure.)

But re-reading this talk helps.

Excuse me now, while I go ponder the mysteries of the space-time continuum . . . I won't let time get away with me to the point of being late for church. Honest.