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The question that many of us are struggling with right now is: for how long this confinement, this social distancing will last? For how long are we going to live in fear? When are we going to have access to our church building? We are dealing with the question of time whether it be Kairos (opportune moment) or Chronos (chronological). Almost, everything in life is timed, and time is one way, we, humankind, try to make sense on the events enfolding in our lives. Last year when I was introduced to the game of football by Rev. Kelly, the first thing I learned about football was time and space. I learned that the game of football is played in 60 minutes divided into four quarters. When we look at life, it might also be like a game of football. Life can be divided in different quarters from childhood to adulthood and I do not know in which quarter you find yourself. However, I would like to offer to you what the Bible says about time. I invite you to turn to the book of Psalms, where you will find that even the Great Moses had struggled with the notion of time. Please, read Psalm 90 (the only Psalm attributed to Moses in the Bible) then you can continue reading what follows. The commentary that I am going to share with you is from Prof. Clinton McCann Jr. Who was my professor of Old Testament and Interpretation of the Bible. This is what he says in his book Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms: Psalm 90 is about God’s time and space. It helps us deepen our understanding of how to discern God’s time and space and how God’s time and space affect our faith… Prof. Clinton McCann says: It looks like Moses’ career was centered on the problem of space, namely, getting Israel out of one place to another place. However, Moses’ problem was not space but time, namely, he ran out of time (he never entered the promised land). Moses becomes the paradigm for Israel’s existence and for human existence since we always run out of time. Never we will fully accomplish what we would like to accomplish nor be what we would like to be. This should not be a depressing message, however, is actually an encouraging one. If great Moses came up short, then perhaps it is not such a disaster that we shall too. He (Clinton McCann) says: Moses’ death was a reminder that it was God, not Moses, who would lead the people into the promised land. Our time, therefore, is not all there is to measure. God’s time is primary, and as Psalm 90 suggests, our time must be measured finally in terms of God’s time. You will recall that my messages since we started this journey in a deep and dark valley has been about prayer. Prayer that comes with statement of faith and Psalm 90 just starts with a statement of faith. It says, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” According to Prof McCann this statement of faith is a pertinent and powerful. God is really the only place that counts. The land is not indispensable, the church building is not indispensable, because God is our dwelling place. God is the only necessity for the life of God’s people. Such as always been the case in all generations. The word generations obviously implies the passage of time, but so do the two verbs in verse 2 (born and brought forth), both of which are used elsewhere in relation to childbirth: Before the mountains were born, or you had brought forth in labor the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. But I would like to point out that the use of “you” in Hebrew is often for emphasis. The divine “You” is all-encompassing of time (generations) and space (earth and the world). Human life and the life of the world find their origin and destiny in God. And so Psalm 90 highlights the movement from God’s time to human time as it says well that for God a thousand years are like few hours! This implies that God can redeem time. God’s redeems time means the future belongs first to God. It is God’s work that humanity needs to perceive and upon which humanity depends. To be sure, humans have work to do, but “the work of our hands” is the object of God’s activity. The priority of God’s activity and the priority of God’s time reshape human activity and human time. Thus, Psalm 90 is an act of faith. And it is also an act of hope. Without having to see it happen, the psalmist trusts that God can and will satisfy and make glad and make manifest God’s work and establish the work of our hands. Psalm 90 is also an act of love. The psalmist’s trust puts him/her in communion with past generations who found a dwelling place in God and with future generations, the children, to whom the work of God will be manifest. Psalm 90 finally, is a profession of faith that invites us and instructs us to live the only way it makes any sense whatsoever to live – in faith and in hope and in love. I hope the reading of Psalm 90 can help us navigate all questions we have about time. Amen. –Pastor Kalaba Kapundu