Dear Friends,
As I write this letter our kids are finishing up their last day of school. So, all of our staff are taking a few days to plan the summer activities. During the school year our schedule and activities revolve around the school schedules and homework. So, we will try to take advantage of the summer freedom to spend time building relationships with the children, helping them where they have special needs, and just playing. For example, one of our kids was passed onto the fourth grade, even though he doesn't know how to read. We wished he would have been kept back, but since he wasn't, we will spend a lot of the summer helping him practice reading. Please do pray for the kids to be able to make up in the areas that they are lacking, and pray for us that we will be creative in making the educational activities fun.
I would also ask you to pray for one of our girls. She is the oldest of many brothers and sisters. Although she is still in elementary school, she often is made to be “mom.” She cooks, cleans and watches the children. Too many times this last year she has missed school because her mom keeps her home to take care of her siblings. Now we are noticing that her mom is jealous of her because she is getting an education and getting the opportunities that she never had. Please pray for this family that there would be healing and understanding. Please pray for this little girl that her heart would be protected and that she can continue to persevere.
Over the past two years a couple of our kids have been in foster care because their father died and their mother left for Italy. Though they have had many struggles, we have seen much positive growth in these kids. Now their mother has promised to come and get them and take them to Italy. Because of the mother's history, we are not very excited about this. While we all understand why children want to be with their mother, we are worried that they will revert back to their old problems and that their school will be interrupted. Please pray for these kids that God's would speak to them and guide their steps.
Because the costs of doing camp continue to go up, we are waiting until September to go to camp. School doesn't start until mid September and we save some money. Please pray for this time and for our preparations. It is always a place of special memories and where we see God working in special ways.
Some in our community are also planning a prayer trip to Moldova. They haven't set any dates yet, but sometime this summer they want to go to pray over the country. We continue to ask God to open doors and to show us how and when to move forward.
In a couple of weeks we will receive a team from Scotland. A church in Dundee has decided to partner with us in the job creation project. They will come to meet the community and serve with us for a few weeks. Please pray for that team and for our time together.
Thank you for your love, prayers, and support,
david and lenutsa
Bells and Watches: Who Keeps the Time?
Our timepieces belong to our gods. It is easy enough to notice that our calendars still carry the traces of the ancient gods. January is “god of the son,” February the Latin month for religious purification, March “the god of war,” and so on. The position of the heavenly lights marked the months, and, in hopes of controlling and predicting the future, they were worshiped. While one might say that in our modern world, gods no longer mark the time, we simply recall the publishing and reciting of horoscopes each day in nearly every newspaper and radio channel.
But control over our timepieces is not limited to the stars. July became a calendar month to honor the deification of Julius Caesar. The same is true of August which honors Augustus Caesar. The Roman emperors, which mirrored the status of the Roman gods, marked the time not only for the Romans but for the world that they claimed to dominate. In this way, time reminded the dominated who was in control and those who demanded worship: the heavenly gods and their earthly vicars.
The establishing of time by the powerful continues today. We remember that Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) put Great Britain in the “center of the world” as the first hour of the day. The British Empire was the place where time started and stopped. Also, in the early 20th century, Germany instituted daylight saving time (DST), which was soon followed by other western countries. Recently, the U.S. government expanded DST in order to conserve energy. These actions reflect two important beliefs. First, we believe in the “god of efficiency,” the name in which our time setting is done. Without the clock, we can play none of our modern games. Without the clock, we cannot regulate our private, commercial and industrial life. Second, by setting the hours of the clock, we believe that we have control over time. This belief is reiterated in our statements, “I will try and make some time,” “I had time to kill,” and “it helped me save time.” Even more religiously, we say, “Let's redeem the time.”
Perhaps a more depressing indication of our calendar indicating our gods is that we are no longer allowed to use the life of Jesus (Before Christ/Anno Domini) to measure history. Instead we use “current era” and “before current era,” which really just glosses over Jesus Christ as it is his life that divides these eras. Also, U.S. public offices and corporations no longer have Christmas but winter holiday, or Easter break but spring break. While this may create space for a society comprised of many different faiths, it also indicates our changing beliefs.
Another example of controlling the calendar is 9/11. While this devastating event forever changed our generation's consciousness in the United States, it has been exported as a defining date for the entire world. From El Salvador, Jon Sobrino notes, Sobrino: “The empire considers itself lord and master of time, in all its density an quality. The calendar is not given equally to everyone as a way of marking their journey through history. 9/11 is a historical benchmark, but 10/7/2001 and 3/30/2003 – when the bombings of Afghanistan and Iraq began – are not.” There are dates only for those events happening “within the imperial orbit” (Where is God?, x).
Thus, even today the powerful claim to define the time. But since our timepieces indicate our gods and are used to remind the dominated – those “under the clock” and “outside the empire” – who is in control, shouldn't Christians have alternative timepieces?
The Old Testament tells us that God created time, and the heavenly lights were set in place by His hand. On the seventh day of creation, God rested to enjoy His handiwork and all of creation is invited to rest with Him. By stopping we acknowledge that ultimately our existence does not lie in our power or work but in God. It is a practical expression of faith that God will take care of us and give us what we need for life and godliness. It is also interesting that the Hebrew day began at nightfall as if to say we begin the day by resting in God and to affirm God's sovereignty and creative work in the midst of the darkness.
The Hebrews also structured their calendar year around their annual worship feasts. They stopped to remember how God rescued and established them through the feasts of unleavened bread, tabernacles, first fruits, etc. Celebrating God's actions and revelation marked the rhythms of their national life.
These rhythms were continued in the life of the church. In Revelation (1:10) John says that he was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. The day of Jesus' resurrection split time between the old and the new, and the Lord's Day set apart the week as a new rhythm. This was not the 7th day of the
week, but rather the 1st day. By stopping to celebrate the Lord's Day, we declare that all the days are the Lord's.
Living by Christian timepieces continued in the monastic tradition. For a few years I lived in an apartment that overlooked a Romanian Orthodox Church. On Sundays and on holidays, I was interrupted by the clinging of the church bell chiming the hour, which called the faithful to prayer. This was always a pleasant interruption, reminding me of the significance of the day and to stop and pray. During visits to Orthodox monasteries, I learned that for thousands of years the bells have chimed everyday, setting the rhythms of work and prayer, of rising and lying down. (Incidentally, Islam, being formed and influenced by adapted Christian practices, is now better known for its five-time call to prayer, than the Church is.) In medieval life the church was in the center of the town or village, and its chiming bell of canonical hours “set” everyone's time. The English language still shows the remnant of the canonical hours with its word “noon,” which originally was the ninth hour of prayer (3 P.M).
Some historians pinpoint the loss of the church as the time-setter to 1370. In that year King Charles V ordered all citizens of Paris to regulate their private, commercial and industrial life by the bells of the Royal Palace clock, which struck every sixty minutes. All churches required to regulate their clocks, in disregard of the canonical hours. Thus, the church had to give material interests precedence over spiritual needs. Eventually, the ringing of the bells was replaced by the silence of the watch. But in an age when the timepieces are dominated by secular and idolatrous powers, we need to recover the rhythms of our Christians tradition. We need to stand against the gods that seek to “set” our clocks. We need to stand against the powers that seek to impose their time on the dominated. And we need our time to be “set” by the One in whom we live, and move, and have our being: the Lord of time.
Living Christian rhythms, that is, letting God be reflected in our time-setting and time-keeping, is profoundly counter cultural. Although time is created by God and our rhythms given by God, contemporary culture is largely dictated by business models that idolize efficiency. Efficiency isn't bad per se, but it is based on our work, our ability and our strength. The counter to efficiency isn't inefficiency but Sabbath. Resting is a spiritual discipline that says, “We believe that ultimately it is God who provides.” In our rest, creation also rests and recovers. In our rest, we also speak freedom to relationships that are at risk of becoming domineering. In our rest, we stop to be with God. We say, “We live for God not for ourselves.”
While Sabbath may seem like a nice idea, it may be impossible to celebrate as we are locked into our cultural calendar. Still, though we may not be able to stop on Sunday, we can find time to rest. Instead of structuring our schedule around to-do lists and work schedules, we can structure our work around creating space for God. We can find regular times to pray. By finding small and creative ways to allow God to set our time, we subvert the gods, the idols, and the powers that seek to structure and subdue our lives. It is time to rebuild the bells.