Our Bible reading for today is Isaiah 38:1-8 and our household object is the clock.
In the Bible passage today, we read of Hezekiah who prayed for an extension to his life when he was sick and was granted this with a sign, the miracle of the sun turning back on the dial ten steps. Clocks are there to mark time for us, and as the poem ‘Time’s Races’ by Revd Henry Twells remarks, the older we get, the more time seems to fly! Paul tells us to ‘redeem the time’, to ‘make the most of every opportunity’ (Eph 5:16), and this reminds us that we all have a limited amount of time on earth and need to use this wisely.
Ps 90:2 reminds us that God does not need time; He is eternal. (‘From everlasting to everlasting, You are God.’) ‘As we see the seconds, minutes and hours tick away, they connect us to the divine creator, and count down earthly time at the end of which we shall be called to eternal, resurrection life, brought and bought by Jesus Christ who crossed the boundaries of time to turn the clock back on sin and offer us a new, eternal future of faith, hope and love.’ (‘At Home In Lent’, Gordon Giles, P 57)