Daniel understood that God met mankind in time. This idea of holy time, or time as a place to meet God is a powerful key. God meets us, as we consecrate our daily times unto Him, and meet Him in the specificity of each slot of time we live. Our hours are where He enters. So we partner with Him in marking out which particular hours are for which type of encounter–ie with which particular aspect of Him He wants to reveal to us. That is planning.
In this, our days, become symbols also of how God reveals Himself–which order, and what pacing tells of who He is, and how He works. Our lives becomes signs of how He incarnates His Ways on earth through normal people.
God enters time, and there are uniquely shaped contours to each space that He meets us in time. Space supports and reveals time, as the cover of a book should reveal its inner content. Our schedules then should be like the cover of the book, and He Himself, and the particular nuances of Himself He is revealing to us, is the content. He wants us to plan our lives to make the right sequences of meeting Him. This is what His Holy Spirit guides us into–this well mapped life, which itself, becomes a symbol of who God is, and how He deals with humanity. In this way, our very lifestyle symbolizes who God is.
So we consecrate time itself to Him, and we meet Him in the many slots of our lives accordingly.
He is the one who enters where we are. And we are the ones who agree, that today i will meet Him in washing clothes, then in talking to a person on the street, then in study, then…each slot has the potential for a uniquely shaped encounter with a specific aspect of who God is. The afternoon is a chapel, as is the evening–each with a unique architecture of meeting- each conversation has its own contour. That is how daily living becomes an act of devotion–when we consecrate all our time to Him as a medium and meeting place with the Most High God.
There is no part of our lives which cannot become holy time. Even sleep, if we give that time to Him can be a meeting ground. Washing dishes-as Brother Lawrence taught-can clearly be a place of meeting Our God!
There are no parts of our days, outside His desire and ability to enter in, and encounter us. For all time is actually His, and as we give it to Him, we are impregnated with the meaningfulness of our entire lives. This is a spiritual life, instead of just a spiritual aspect of our days. We want all of life to become spiritual, or a potential meeting place with God.
God works “in” time. He enters history. The story of Jesus is the most overt overture of God in this statement of fact. He entered as Himself into space and time. But there is also this daily desire for entrance into our time.
Daniel saw God as active in time, entering all of history and being present. Time becomes holy when we give it to him, and begin to partner with Him in time–then we start to be lead to which part of Himself He wishes to reveal next in our days; and we carve or mark a time slot for that. Our very lives become a series of encounters with different aspects of who God is. That is the meaning of time. Or rather, it’s purpose. To be, like all other areas, a revelation of who God is. Daniel knew this.
Time management then, is really a meditation on and partnering with God. We are managing it–led by His Spirit–as a series of unique encounters with God, in a progression or sequence which He is leading. This sequence is the unfolding of His Being as He chooses to unfurl it, to and in us, and ultimately through us. This God, in time–ever intervening, incarnating is one of the essential revelations in the book of Daniel. And practical guide for us as well, on how to make time sacred. Our lives, then, are meant to be become living symbols of how God deals with humanity into our hours–how He reveals Himself in time.
Daniel saw history as God working directly in time with humanity. That He was a God who cared about and entered the hours, seasons and years. God spoke overtly about the passage of time through Jeremiah and others of Daniel’s contemporaries. But what is clear from Daniel, is that his God was one very involved in the sequencing of history–even pointing towards an ultimate intervention into space and time of His Son Jesus–the Messiah–who at Daniels’ time was still to come; and then past that, Daniel saw that God would continue to work in time until His Kingdom was fully incarnate on earth. What Daniel saw was a God who had always, and would always work in time to manifest His full expression on the earth.
So the idea of consecrating all of our time as a meeting place with Our God, is based in who God is, and how He desires to reveal Himself both to us and through our lives. In this way, as Daniel understood, time is Holy.
