Redeeming the Time

Letters for the Road: June 2023

Dear reader, 

I’ve been turning the phrase “redeeming the time” over in my mind for more than a year now, thinking I might make it the subject of one of these letters. I wrote about time earlier this year, but this phrase of Paul’s continues to come to my thoughts. I’ve been looking for the phrases, the ideas, to clarify for me what exactly this phrase means—and does not mean. 

In terms of the latter, I wonder if you, like me, have inadvertently equated redeeming the time with efficiency—with an attention to life that tries to plan each day carefully so that nothing is wasted. For some reason, perhaps due to the modern idolatry of efficiency combined with the Protestant work ethic engrained in Western culture, I have often subconsciously evaluated myself against Paul’s instruction in terms of output and accomplishment, in terms of an idleness-averse activity. 

Paul’s language in Ephesians, “redeeming the time,” carries with it an economic context: buying, paying a price, ransoming. Perhaps our imaginations have been fixed on the transactional nature of this word, and combined with our capitalist context, has too quickly considered time with an attitude of calculation, profit and loss. We lose and waste time, buy time, save time. In all this language is the threat of scarcity, of not having enough, of wanting more and more. 

I found a different way of thinking about time in a fascinating book by Catholic scholar John Thiel. In his “aesthetics of time” Now and Forever, Thiel considers the significance and beauty of time for us as creatures, both in the present and in eternity. He argues that time is the context in which we become who we are—who God is shaping us to be. Time “is the ambiance for creatures’ graceful becoming.” Here, Thiel uses “graceful” both as an aesthetic term, indicating the beauty of our development as image bearers of God, as well as the dependence of this becoming on God’s grace. 

There is much, much more to Thiel’s fascinating book, but what I’ve quoted is enough to think about what redeeming the time might mean. Paul’s phrase indicates that time is not neutral. To draw on Thiel’s description, perhaps we could say that we are formed and shaped in time, becoming either more like Christ, or becoming de-formed.

To redeem the time, then, we work from this understanding of time in order to be attentive to the moments of our day, not out of anxiety to use them as efficiently as possible, but in hopeful recognition of the possibilities offered to us—possibilities to love, to worship, to serve. Time is redeemed, “bought back,” when it becomes for us a context of turning toward God in humble, hopeful dependence, and when we orient our time towards God’s future coming. 

Turning in this way will certainly not always be efficient. Even now, my youngest has interrupted my writing to ask to play tic-tac-toe. How do I negotiate each moment, with its myriad opportunities? What does time’s redemption mean for this present moment of my day? 

I do not have any easy answers or three-step guides to making faithful choices about your time. But I am pretty confident that seeing time as the context in which I become more like Christ is more likely to lead to wise decisions than a focus on efficiency and productivity. For the former, we will need, as Thiel puts it, a “graceful attunement to the Holy Spirit.”

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Clarice Beckett was an Australian artist, a prodigious painter who lived in the beginning of the 20th century. Some of her works are on display in Geelong this winter, and oh, are they lovely. The tones and mood are particularly deep. I was also struck by the sense of time that she captured: many are set in the evening, in the moments as the sun is setting. It’s a fleeting time of day, the light changing so quickly from the first signs of sunset to the final darkness of night. I wonder if she worked quickly, racing the sun, or if she held the image in her mind for a later time, composing it slowly and meditatively. 

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Lord God, heavenly Father, 
we thank you 
that you have granted us to live 
in the time of your favor 
when we may hear your holy gospel, 
know your fatherly love 
and behold your Son, Jesus Christ! 
Most merciful Father, 
let the light of your holy Word remain with us, 
and govern and guide our hearts by your Holy Spirit 
that we may never forsake your Word, 
but remain steadfast in it 
and finally obtain eternal salvation; 
through your beloved Son, 
Jesus Christ our Lord, 
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, 
one God, now and forever.

-Viet Dietrich

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On the road with you, 

Laura