Do You Have the Time?

I don’t know about you but I never seem to have enough of it—time! I thought I’d share some more of ‘The Sabbath’ by Abraham J Heschel. There are so many books out there, too many to count, about—Time—telling us how to manage it, how to get the most out of it, how to save it, what we should be doing with it, what we shouldn’t be doing with it. There are day planners, interactive calendars, there are clocks on everything we own…we seem to be fixated on time. We wonder how we’re spending it, is it “quality time”, am I wasting it, am I doing enough with it?

In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel tells us that God has given us the Sabbath, a block of time, as a gift. Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Born January 11, 1907 in Warsaw, his ageless wisdom gives us a glimpse of what God wants for us, in a simple yet profound little book. I hope you will enjoy the following excerpts from the Prologue.

There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things in space, becomes our soul concern.

Even religions are frequently dominated by the notion that the deity resides in space, within particular localities like mountains, forest, trees or stone, which are, therefore, singled out as holy places. There is much enthusiasm for the idea that God is present in the universe, but that idea is taken to mean His presence in space rather than in time, in nature rather than in history; as if He were a thing, not a spirit. Yet a god who can be fashioned, a god who can be confined, is but a shadow of man.

In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch. Reality to us is thinghood…even God is conceived by most of us as a thing. Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face. Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness, they are a threat to our very lives; we are more harassed than supported by the Frankensteins of spatial things. We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. While the deities of other peoples were associated with places or things, the God of Israel was the God of events: the Redeemer from slavery, the Revealer of the Torah, manifesting Himself in events of history rather than in things or places.

One of the most distinguished words in the Bible is the word qadosh, holy…that word is used for the first time in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. How extremely significant is the fact that it is applied to time: “And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” Genesis 2:3. The weekly Sabbath is entirely independent of the month and moon festivals (Sabbaths), determined by events in nature…the essence of the Sabbath is completely detached from the world of space.

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things in space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the result of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

Wood Engraving by Ilya Schor

I have shared more about this book it is one of my favorites, if you’re interested check out these other posts. Time and Tranquility, serenity, peace and repose