God's Time Zone
For ages, people used the sun to determine what time it was where they were. Every community set its clocks to noon based on when the sun reached its highest position in the sky; as a result, when it was noon in Washington, D.C., the local time in New York City was already minutes ahead. Before the days of long-distance travel, differences in local times weren’t a big deal. That changed with the rise of railroads in the 1800s. Although it was now possible to travel significant distances faster than ever before, a multitude of local times, particularly in large countries such as the United States, made things confusing when it came to train schedules.
On November 18, 1883, America’s railroads began using a standard time system involving four time zones: Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific. Within each zone, all clocks were synchronized. The railroad industry’s plan was adopted by much of the country, although the time-zone system didn’t become official across the United States until the passage of the 1918 Standard Time Act, which also established daylight saving time. By the mid-20th century, most of the world had adopted a system of international time zones, in which the planet is divided into 24 zones spaced at intervals of approximately 15 degrees of longitude. In 1884, delegates from more than two dozen nations met at the International Meridian Conference, held in Washington, D.C., where they chose the line of longitude running through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, as the official prime meridian, or zero point of longitude.
Today, Russia, the world’s largest nation in terms of land mass, has 11 time zones.
But China, the fourth-largest by area, has just 1 time zone! Before 1949, China had five time zones. After the rise of communism, the government required the entire country to operate on China Standard Time for the sake of national unity.
The Ancient Greek word kairos (καιρός) means "the right time" or "opportune moment" (as opposed to chronos (Χρόνος) which means actual "time" and refers to a quantitative or exact measurement of time). It's used to describe a special moment when it's the best "time" to say or do something.
Many years before the Greek NT was composed, the writer of Ecclesiastes tried to help humanity with achieving a unity of timeliness which the Chinese government will never achieve through a mandated, nationwide time zone. Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 offers us the opportunity, as God’s children, to have a unified perspective of kairos (καιρός) — time.
3:1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
ALTERNATE APPLICATION: In the end, it isn't so much about how you render time, but how you use it.
"Making the best use of the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:16, ESV).
"Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time" (Colassians 4:5, ESV).
Pursuing Unity in a Divided World
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of division in the world today. People are divided over religion, and religious practices. People are divided over politics, and political opinions. People are even divided over whether this dress is white and gold or black and blue.
Remember that from a few years back? When this picture first showed up on the internet, the internet was divided over what colors this dress was. How many of you see a gold and white dress? How many of you see a blue and black dress? Isn’t that weird?
But in truth, the dress really was black and blue, so there was a right answer. But because of the lighting conditions of the picture, many people perceived the colors differently.
Now, some of the things we divide over are silly, but some are warranted, because there really is a right and wrong. It’s evil to cry out, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace. In other words, we shouldn’t pretend everything about today’s culture is okay, celebrating what’s immoral for the sake of peace, when there are real evils in the world.
Jesus said that He did not come to bring peace, but a sword. And sometimes that means our own families will be against us because of our faith in Christ. There’s division.
And yet, because Jesus came, the Bible promises that God tears down the walls of hostility so that we can have peace with one another, not only in eternity, but today, as we rest in Jesus.
"And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth" (Ephesians 1:10, NLT).
"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility" (Ephesians 2:14, NIV).
Working Together
Snowflakes are frail, but if enough of them stick together, they can stop traffic.
Likewise, by God's design, the lone Christian has little impact on the world. But when two or three are gathered together, that's when Christ's presence is felt (Matthew 18:20). When the diverse gifts of the individual members of a local church begin operating cooperatively, that's when impactful ministry takes place (1Corinthians 12:12).
"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many" (1 Corinthians 12:12-14).