Minute-glasses
Inspired by Anne Ross Cousin (Free Church of Scotland 1854), who was inspired by Samuel Rutherford's last words, "Glory, Glory in Emanuel Land."
"My times are in thy hands!" (Psalm 31:15)
The children of God halt between the opinions of two men. One is named 'Old' and the other, 'New'. (1Kings 18:21:Rom. 7:24) How long do we halt between these two? It feels like forever. While we walk this earth, we are a mixture of darkness and light, death and life. Yet I find in this halting a blessing: even as I am a mix of death and life, darkness and light, God's love remains. (Rom. 5:8)
The apostle Paul, a man of truth and experience, speaks in his letter about this very struggle, "For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind" (Romans 7:22-23). Here, the believer finds himself in Paul's war, in this struggle, this halting.
"My times are in thy hands!" (Psalm 31:15) Consider an hourglass. An easy object to remember. Once you get up close, you can see so many grains of sand pouring through the neck, uninterrupted. Every moment, time is being exchanged for eternity. You say, “There’s my life slipping through!” But ours is not the hourglass, dear one, so much as the minute-glass. Each one of us is time captured within time. Come closer. One grain of sand is actually us… our own little minuit-glass. We are all grains of fleeting moments, cries, laughs, and sighs that vanish as quickly as they are born. (Job 7:6,7) What is man, if not a mist, a tale told, a single minuteglass in the hourglass’s history? (James 4:14)
But, though we are but minute-glasses, the hourglass belongs to us. It belongs to us insofar as God gives it. We are but minutes within it, yes, a grain or two in the pile of time. Yet, though we are but minutes, we are precious minutes, kept by God, saved by God.
"My times are in thy hand" (Psalm 31:15). This, dear believer, is our assurance – that our times, our fleeting minutes, are held by Him. In His hands our bounds are kept, our course set, our time appointed. And think of those precious Hands that hold that hourglass that contains our brief moments before we fly away. He holds His own with nail-pierced Hands. Dearly loved, despite our mixture, despite our sins, we are deeply loved. For they are Christ's hands, Who is the Father of Time, holding the glass of all our days. (Isa. 9:6)
Dear one, we will not halt forever between these two. In an instant, we shall be changed, and we will be like Him. For we shall see Him as He is. So dear one, walk here below with Him, “until Christ be formed in you.” (Gal 4:19). Though we are but moments, here and gone, in God's glassless eternity, the child of God is held, kept, and loved with an everlasting love.
Oh LORD by Thy Word and Spirit cease my halting. Or if I must halt, may I do so between faith, hope, and love in Christ.