Acts 16:16-34
Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20
John 17:20-26
Have you ever watched a young child at play and thought to yourself, "he's no bigger than a minute"? Maybe you marveled over his or her perfect little features, but chances are you didn't fade into any deep thought about the profound meaning of those words - no bigger than a minute!
It's just an endearing way of saying the child is small. Small? Compared to what? Now most of us don't see ourselves as philosophers needing to know every little detail of life so it might seem strange to wonder just how big is a minute anyway? Or when we say a child or a puppy is "cuter than a bug's ear" does it matter which particular bug we have in mind?
No. Most of the time it doesn't really matter which bugs have cute ears or which particular minute is bigger than another. That is, of course, unless that particular minute is one of YOURS, especially one that is part of the happiest day of your life or, on the other side of the coin, it is part of the worst day of your life.
No hour comes around sooner than its' minutes. Think of that for a minute. (No pun intended). There are no hours without minutes and no days without hours.
No new day comes before yesterday and no tomorrow before today. Like clockwork, the rhythm of life never misses a beat. So why is it that we didn't see it coming? Today - this minute, this day. And here it is; it's a new day, Lord.
Yes, it's a brand new day, full of brand new hopes and possibilities and we should feel assured of God's presence and His undying love for us. Yet this day is different from yesterday and we feel less sure of what it means.
Where we once felt carefree, tossing about like corks on the ocean, today we find ourselves wondering if we ever even contemplated a day when we would need to grow legs and walk upon solid land.
We look around and wonder where have all the good times gone. Are today's jokes meaner and cruder than we remember or have we just forgotten how to laugh?
Is there more violence in the world or does it just look that way because there are more twenty-hour news networks with endless time to expose more of what's been there all along.
We find the reality of battlefields in our living rooms taking our attention away from the make-believe scripts of violent movies, and we strain to discern which is real and which is fiction.
Sometimes we lose ourselves in pleasant fantasy or comedy in an effort to dull the seriousness that surrounds us. We go to church on Sunday seeking peace and closeness with God and our neighbors, but do we wander back to our homes and jobs feeling renewed?
Over two thousand years ago God sent His only Son to live among us that the world would come to know The Father and believe in him; that the love of the Father for his son, Jesus would also live in us and we in them.
And the love would transform the world as we, God's own, found our way to salvation and eternity. With patience we have waited while humanity wrested itself from its wild nature to find its way to a truer, gentler destiny.
We crept through the dark days of medieval savagery, and danced with the artists of the Renaissance and felt awakened to a new dawn, full of hope for love and tolerance.
All this we did in all those little minutes, all those little unimportant minutes that took on a life of their own as they rushed by leaping into the pool of hours, days, years that would fill just a tiny space in God's living history.
We endured far too many wars and, finally, when we were tired of war, we found a moment of optimism and named one of them "the war to end all wars."
But now we take a step back and look at where we've been and where we are today and we are filled with disappointment because, surely, we have dropped the ball. After all the struggles and all the faith, it seems nothing much has changed in those two thousand years of minutes. Were all those precious minutes wasted after all?
In the final days before the crucifixion, Jesus prayed for his disciples, and he said: "I ask not only on behalf of these (his disciples), but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me."
These verses aren't new to us; we've heard them many times, if not word for word, then at least paraphrased quite well, and we have carried them faithfully in our hearts. "The glory that you have given me I have given them," Jesus prayed to his father, "so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
But sometimes it just doesn't seem like anything has changed. Maybe we are just spinning our wheels, just marking time, just running in place, spending all our minutes with nothing to show for them.
We are discouraged because if all the spent minutes of the world have made no difference in all these years, what can the few we have to give do? After all, we ourselves are no bigger than a minute and much too small to matter. But we race against the clock anyway because Heaven is written on our hearts. Even when we doubt or fear that we might be mistaken, we give our minutes to God. That is why we draw our children into our arms and hold them tighter and longer than we used to.
That is why we lift our eyes and greet the stranger on the street in hopes we will see the love that Jesus prayed for, an assurance that we are not alone.
That is why we stop and smell the flowers that magically appear where they were not yesterday, and out of nowhere we hear the lovely songs of every imaginable bird as it passes overhead looking down on us as if taking aerial photographs to map the way for those who follow.
That is why we raise our weakened voices, unsure at first if they can still be heard above the roar of chaos; and that is why we cry out "enough!" And we find like voices joining in with ours. "Enough already". That is why the stranger on the street smiles back or lends a helping hand and we begin to recognize the spirit behind the smile, the one that we'll pass on to the next soul in need, and them to those beyond. And Jesus continues his prayer, "Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world." We glance back over our shoulders to that scene long ago just before He was crucified and we know that we all, no bigger than a minute, are still with him. We have not let him down. He knows the way is hard to follow and he is patient with us.
And we have been faithful even when we have faltered. It has not been such a long time. After all, a thousand years is but a minute to God - and we, you and I, are no bigger than a minute, and no smaller than His thousand years.
"Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."
Amen.