A Twilight Musing

          As we gather around Christ’s table, we begin with the purpose the Lord established, that is, remembering Him.  But paradoxically, we are also invited by God to suspend time by uniting past and future into God’s divine “Now.”  For in our own mortal past lies sin, and in our natural future as human beings lies damnation.   But as we symbolically drink the blood of Christ, we tap into the artery of Divine Life, which has no beginning and no end; and in eating the bread we reaffirm our participation in the immortal risen Body of Christ.  In both, we celebrate our liberation from the tyranny of time; having sacrificed to Him our past and our future, we experience His reaffirmation that within us we have, through the Holy Spirit, a portion of the timeless Life that is, and was, and ever shall be.   

          What are the implications of this epiphany of suspended time in the Lord’s Supper?  For one thing, it means that we are not doomed to carrying the baggage of the past, nor to fearing the pitfalls and uncertainties of the future.  Both are subsumed by the absolute safety of God’s time-redeeming “Now.” 

          There is also a message of divine fellowship in God’s perfect “Now.”  Just as in Christ we are freed from our own sinful actions of past and future, so we are also freed from the bondage of bitterness, whether in a long-held response to past actions of others or in a readiness to take offense in the future.  If we are truly in God’s “Now,” there is no longer any need to maintain our pride or our imagined welfare by holding grudges or harboring suspicions against one another.  The refreshing dew of God’s power of forgiveness is always available to us.

          So beginning with a humble remembrance of what God has done for us in the sacrifice of Christ, we can reaffirm that the efficacy of that sacrifice is eternally new, and that it enables us to transcend our captivity to time and all that is mortal.

               REGRETS

It's part of Adam's curse

That here the past is never quite forgot;

Though God can blot it out,

We humans find the bitter-sweet of past events

To be the ever-present evidence

Of our mortality.

The Lethe of God's forgiveness

Is imperfectly imbibed

In this domain of time;

But even diluted doses

Bespeak an unstained "now"

In another clime.

                                                --Elton D. Higgs

                                                    Dec. 29, 1976

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.