As Orthodox Christians, we know the importance of a healthy outlook towards, an approach to, and our relationship with creation. After all, God created everything in His infinite Wisdom and out of His infinite Love to share with us. “He Is The Giver of Life (Ο Ζωοδότης”). Indeed, He fashioned us out His good earth and gave us His Divine and quickening breath, and then, made us the stewards of His creation. He gave us dominion over His earth as a custodian, and we are to be grateful for it, respectful to it, and care for it, and for this responsibility, we will ultimately be held accountable.

Moreover, as He has promised, He will return and ask us to give Him an account of what we did with everything He entrusted to our care. We must never forget that everything comes from God, and everything belongs to God. We are just His stewards who must care for, nurture, and multiply His manifold blessings and return His Sacred Deposit that He has entrusted providentially to our care as His sons and daughters--His heirs.

           As we rush about and worry, “anxious and troubled about many things,” oftentimes, we forget that part of God's creation is time. Eternal and infinite, God is before, outside of, and beyond time. He is not limited to the time and space He creates, but as created beings, we are. However, what matters for us is what we do with this time that God gives to us. What matters is what we do with this "present," this moment God entrusts to us.

Lamentably, and often tragically, this precious gift of time is ignored, squandered, and wasted, but we should be most vigilant and be good, resourceful, and productive stewards of God’s gift of time, for we know that time is inexorable and waits for no man.

 We have the gift of time in the present, and once it is lost, it is lost forever—along with countless other opportunities God gives us at that one point in time. Therefore, when we have it, it behooves us to be good and faithful stewards of it. Like most things in life, time can be an asset; or it can be a liability. Whether it is the former or the latter depends upon our approach to it. Thus, we must be grateful for it, respect it, share it, and be good custodians of it.

           Saint Paul uses the phrase "in the fullness of time" to remind us of its importance and the role time has played throughout creation, human history, and in our salvation story. Scripture teaches us of its importance and tells us there is a time for every season. God placed us on this good earth for only so much time. We observe the seasons, the cycles, the ebbs and flows, and the constellations, and we are guided and taught by them. It is the same with our stages of life.

However, there are no guarantees in this life. We do not know how long we will be on His good earth. Our life can be compared to a “flimsy shadow, a “passing dream” or a “withering flower” that vanishes or fades away. We can be here one moment, and then, be gone the next. We cannot control nor portend what the future holds, but we can control what we do with the present, this precious gift of time from God, and cooperate with His Grace in that specific time He gives us on earth, for our eternal salvation in Heaven, which is beyond time.

           You may have heard or read about the "dash." The dash is what we often see on tombstones. On the one side of the dash is our date of birth, and on the other side of the dash is our date of death. It is a very short, simple horizontal line. It is not long and can be made quickly, and this is illustrative of our brief sojourn on this earth. In the context of eternity, our time on this earth is seemingly insignificant; however, our time on this earth is most significant, indeed.  

What matters for eternity is what we do with the time we have. Be it 30, 40, 50, 80, or 100 years, what matters for our immortality is whether or not we are good stewards of God's precious gift of time. Our date of birth and date of death do not define us. We cannot control them, and we cannot take credit for them. We are defined, however, by how we use God's time. We are defined by the story we write and the life we live. In truth, what we do, for good or for evil, echoes unto eternity.  

For the Believer, Orthodox Christianity is not just about memorizing, learning, and accumulating. Orthodox Christianity is an approach, outlook, and way of life. We must always be conscious, therefore, of how we live our life and how we use our time that God has given us. Do we care, do we love, do we share, do we help, do we do good on this good earth for our family, our neighbors, our community, our environment, and His Church? Doing, helping, sharing, and giving are what matter--not possessions, accolades, and trophies.

           When we share, give, and love, we imitate God and become God-like; for sharing, giving, and loving are the divine attributes of our Trinitarian God, and when we reflect this Divine Community of cooperation and reciprocity, we live in His Image and Likeness that He created us to be and fulfill our divine purpose and destiny in Him. From birth to death, we have the opportunity of God's time to do good and make an appreciable, positive difference.

God has endowed us with a divine, free will to choose good or evil, to be productive or destructive, to be positive or negative, to be encouraging or complaining, to be giving or selfish. What we have or accumulate stays behind, rusts, decomposes, crumbles, and fades away. What we give and share lives on well after we have left this earth, echoing and reverberating in the memories and hearts of others, and thus, we participate in an immortality through them on earth as we participate in the immortality of Christ in heaven.

           God came in the "fullness of time." He not only created everything; He became a part of His creation to ordain it, guide it, reconcile it, and save it. He entered time and space to consecrate time and space. He became Man, so man can become God, by His Grace. God works out His Divine Plan for salvation in time. He prepared a human lineage for His purpose. As Orthodox Christians, we commemorate and sanctify His time with our Liturgical Cycle.

For us, September 1st is the beginning of the Church Year. Quite fittingly, the first Great Feast of the Liturgical Year is dedicated to the Birth of the Most Holy Mother of God. With her birth in time, the sanctification and salvation of the world has been prepared.

Also, quite properly, the last Great Feast of the Liturgical Year commemorates her death. We remember, we take inspiration, and we honor what the Holy Mother of God accomplished for humanity and creation during her ordained time on this good earth. No dash on an epitaph can define her, for she cooperated, as a good and faithful steward--with the time given her by God, so she could have eternity with God.

           Thus, we see the importance of the date of birth and the date of death in the Church--the time we have been given by God. We honor the cycles of life and sanctify beginnings and endings. The Church blesses births and deaths. The Mother of God played her part for the salvation of the world. She obediently, simply, and freely cooperated with God's Grace in time--in the time given to her from her Birth to her Death--and the salvation of the world was prepared through her Son Who entered time in order to grant us eternity.

           So, give your time, come to His Church that He has established in time for your salvation, and thereby, rightly honor His Love, Wisdom, and Gift. Use your time wisely to love, give, and share, and as you do so in this time given, you will have a share in immortality in His Church below with His People where you are remembered and immortality above in Heaven with Christ Who established His Church in time for this very purpose.

ΚΑΛΟ ΜΙΝΑ

           By His Grace, and in His Time, I humbly remain, yours in Christ,  

†Father Jim

†Reverend James T. Paris, Protopresbyter