As a young child I remember fondly spending a lot of time at my grandparents house in La. One of the many things I remember about their house is the many clocks they had in the living room. I guess they collected grandfather clocks or something like that. All I know is there was probably 3-4 tall stand up clocks and 4-5 cuckoo clocks and maybe 7-8 clocks that stood in a display hutch thing. On top of all these there were 5 or 6 clocks that hung on the wall. In total there had to be over 20 clocks of various styles and sizes in the room. One of the things I found the most intriguing is that they all made some sort of noise every half hour or so. Some cuckooed, some rang, some played songs but they all had a different sound. As you can imagine with that many clocks they were not all in sync. So there was a constant melody of chaotic clock noises all the time you were in the room watching mutual of Omaha wild kingdom on TV. Now being an old man it would drive me crazy having all that noise going all the time, but then it was really nice to listen to.
What was interesting is that I have no clue which clock was correct on time and which one was off. The other thing that is funny now looking back is even in that room if I asked my Grandfather what time it was while in that room (or anywhere for that matter) he wouldn’t look to any of the clocks but rather he would look at the watch her wore on his wrist as he knew the time on that watch was correct and accurate. For that one his routine every morning was to listen to the official time station and verify that his watch was accurate to the exact second. The clocks in the living room worked but I guess they were more like decoration. The one that actually was used to monitor time was the little watch he had on his wrist.
How easy it is for us to live our spiritual lives like those clocks in my Grandparents living room. We work and we make noise and we have all the ability to be a good clock but often our time is just off a bit. It can feel like a room full of clocks where no one is set exactly the same. It can feel chaotic for some and there is always someone declaring exactly what time it is but the reality is that even with all those clocks we can be unsure of the time and I might venture to say because of all the clocks we are just a bit off, and it does not seem possible to find the correct timing.
With that in mind there was never any doubt of what time it was because My grandfather knew his watch was right and the time was true. Sometimes it’s easy in our spiritual lives to start thinking our timing is right and we move ahead a little too fast. Or other times we want time to slow down so we can stay in a certain season longer and we fall behind. Knowing this is how we are, it makes it even more important to embrace the truth and realize there is only one place to find the true time and that is in the hands of our heavenly father.