It may be Day 35 (counting Sundays) of Lent, but in another way, today is Day 5 for me. That is, Day 5 of going without a wristwatch.
Now, this isn’t part of some planned noble experiment to live in the moment. Actually, I didn’t realize I wasn’t wearing my watch until I got to work on Friday, and I went directly there to the airport for a weekend meeting with my St. Davids pals. I figured it was on my nightstand at home, but when I returned, it wasn’t there either. And so far, I just haven’t had the time, forgive me, to look for it.
When will the grand search begin? Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe Palm Sunday afternoon.
Or maybe that Monday night.
As I’ve looked around at other people the past few days, I’m struck by how few wear watches anymore. They check their phones. They rely on those pop-up reminders in e-mail or texts. And whether it’s in meeting rooms or at airports, there also seem to be fewer clocks… and even fewer that were reset after daylight savings time began.
I’ve also been surprised how seldom, actually never so far, I’ve missed something that I should have done or attended. Either I get one of those notifications, or someone comes and gets me, or, even if I’m deep into working on something else, I seem to realize when it’s time to move on to the next activity.
In some ways, it makes me wonder about what can be a compulsive need to reach out to God for reassurance, comfort, intervention, and forgiveness. Not that it’s a bad thing to talk with God; far from it. But maybe we need to regard him as someone who’s always with us, not someone we put in a drawer or on a shelf each night. Maybe with the confidence that he’ll always get us where we can be, we can listen and praise a little more, and be a little less anxious about whether his watch and ours are in sync.
