Cometh the hour.....

Is it not for us to decide what times we live in; all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Thus spake Gandalf, surely giving voice, as he frequently did, to the viewpoint of his creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, who thus spake surely giving voice to something he'd learnt from his in turn.

History's super-men (so the theory goes) are supposed to take hold of the times, and bend them to their wills, thereby evidencing themselves to be those super-men, a breed apart to the common masses.

It should go without saying that no follower of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, can endorse such a view. Not that we don't shape the times, nor that he didn't: but it's the means; he did it, and teaches us to do it, by radical surrender. To gain life, give yours away.

If we think that we are shaping the times by directing the events in the way that men normally do, then we are surely deluded. Who can say what tomorrow will bring? After not many years, we can all look back to seismic events after which "nothing was the same". That might be a personal event - meeting someone, falling in love, children - or a related personal tragedy. There are things from before we were born: what shaped our parents, and their parents, so that we were born in such a place and time, and in such circumstances? And then there are the great "political" events such as 9/11,  the prosecution of wars, the fall of one government and its replacement by another, Covid and government responses to it, the decisions made in order to maintain power and the compromises and consequences (e.g. the British Brexit referendum that was held as a consequence of coalition negotiations, and then the consequence of the narrow result). Two days ago a non-politician in the US was shot dead, most likely because the shooter detested his opinions.

A lot of people seem to live with the delusion that because they talk a lot about these things in their small, inward-looking circles, that they are playing a significant role in shaping them. Furthermore, they apparently believe that that role is the most important part of their reaction to the events.

How history would look if we'd never been born, nobody can say. Perhaps some very insignificant people have been the unwitting initiators of long chains of events leading to monumental consequences. I suppose that most of us go along to vote knowing perfectly well that it's very unlikely in our lifetimes that 1 vote will end up being the difference in the final outcome; and yet quite rightly, we still do it.

The main, very important, thing to be understood, though, is that God has not told us that we are responsible for the times and seasons that we dwell in. We are held responsible for how we respond to them. Christ has given us the mission of proclaiming him, his death, resurrection and exaltation, amongst the nations according to the modern and pattern laid down by his apostles in the New Testament. We have not been given responsibility to control the outcomes, and have not been told that we have a task of gaining political power so that we can shape the times: the apostles were spectacularly, completely disinterested in strategising or telling others how to strategise to do so. They did not see it as part of their mission, either in practice or teaching. Of course, in the nature of living in this world, it may come to pass that an individual Christian does receive a calling to exercise political power. This then means that questions about how Christians would exercise such power do arise, and the church has to study them; but they cannot be allowed to re-write our actual mission. This fact should not be a loophole which can be widened to drive the complete proverbial coach and horses through.

Christ calls us to be faithful. The events that happen around us which, sometimes in a moment, change the situation we're living in, perhaps dramatically, without asking our permission, must be responded to. But we must respond to them as Christians. Our mission is to take up the cross and become servants of all. Our calling is to demonstrate the love of God in our churches, homes and to our neighbours according to our opportunity, especially doing good to suffering fellow-believers. Our aim is that, when the self-sacrificing love between us is observed, all men might know that we are truly followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Our way of life must show that we have a Master whom we are obeying and imitating. What shape that will take in different situations will vary. And each one of us, individually, will have to answer to him for what we did with our situations. Again: he will not condemn us for failing to control the times. Faithfulness means how we respond to them. When they observe us, will people say "that's living how Jesus would have lived - now I understand!"... or not?