Well, here we are at the end of January already! How many of us have said or thought that in recent days?

I find time extraordinary, and our attitude towards it is fascinating. As you probably have realised over the years, it’s one of my favourite subjects!

A news article was recently discussing the possibility of getting rid of “Greenwich Mean Time” and replacing it with Atomic Time which is, seemingly, more accurate. Poor old Greenwich I think would have its nose put out of joint. It is quite amazing that little Greenwich in South East London has been the centre of the world’s time clocks since 1884, the Prime Meridian! But the one thing I particularly remember our science teacher telling us, many years ago, is that there is nothing regular in nature. The earth doesn’t go round the sun at exactly the same speed and exactly the same trajectory year after year. Whatever about a leap year this year, when we ‘catch up’ on the last four years, they were speaking about a leap second. It’s all quite involved! Time is such an extraordinary thing – I remember a panellist on Mock the Week talking about Usain Bolt running the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds, saying, in his Scottish brogue, that Bolt was so fast it took him eleven seconds just to watch him run the 100 metres!

Here’s something interesting about two particular years: 1981 and 2005.

What were you doing in 1981? (I was still a student!)

1981:

1.    Prince Charles got married.

2.   Liverpool crowned soccer champions of Europe.

3.   Australia lost the Ashes

4.   The Pope died.

2005:

1.    Prince Charles got married

2.   Liverpool crowned soccer Champions of Europe.

3.   Australia lost the Ashes

4.   The Pope died.

And they say that the lesson to be learned is that the next time Charles gets married, someone should warn the Pope!

Not long ago, we had one of those family evenings in our house when my sister-in-law and her husband showed us all the pictures of their recent trip to Australia. I nearly said ‘slides’, but these were all professionally produced via their computer onto our TV screen. Now, have you ever been at an evening like that - watching slides of someone else’s holiday?? I know I’m saying that a bit tongue in cheek; they are great fun and it was a wonderful evening. They had gone out to meet up with their daughter who had been doing a long tour of New Zealand (including the Rugby World Cup!) and Australia with her fiancé. Nicola had taken something like 3,000 photographs, James would be a bit more like me and he took 16 photographs!

One of the most spectacular set of photographs was of Sydney Harbour Bridge on New Year’s Eve. They had all waited in a particular place most of the day to get a good view, in and amongst every creed and colour,

all literally watching time pass by. I remember, certainly, seeing Sydney Harbour Bridge at the turn of the millennium. It’s quite a site. As another comedian said (talking about time passing so quickly), ‘The millennium; wasn’t that just last Tuesday?’

Up to a couple of years ago, we had a Watchnight Service in Glencraig; a time when we welcomed in the New Year in an attitude of prayer. I always said, you could come from your parties for a few moments to go to Church and then go back again, if you wanted to. And we used to have mulled wine over at the Vicarage and of late, we had mulled wine in the Church Hall. I thought it was a wonderful thing to do. But some argued that it wasn’t a particular Christian occasion, some even thought it was a bit Presbyterian and not Anglican at all. God forbid! My point was always that the turn of every year marked a Christian occasion when 2011 became 2012; when now it is two thousand and twelve years after the birth of Christ rather then two thousand and eleven! We literally experienced time passing!

Whatever about Greenwich creating the Prime Meridian, and to think that all of history is recorded in reference to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem two thousand and twelve years ago, is really quite something. And I do mean all of history, not just our Westernised so-called ‘Christian’ society, but the whole world. Yes, we have talked about the Jewish calendar before, and of course other cultures and other faiths have calendars of their own; the Chinese New Year we know about, for example. But just think about those countries and cultures for a moment; Arab, Chinese, African, and so on, it’s just extraordinary.

For example, The Beijing Olympics (in the middle of communist China) was still the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

And for New Year’s Eve on whatever day or in whatever place, the world seems to be one. Who doesn’t acknowledge that 2011 has turned in to 2012?

I know we can argue that for commercial reasons, and for many other reasons, I’m sure, it seems to suit us all to have a fairly standardised system of time. But for the entire world to acknowledge that this year we are now two thousand and twelve years since the birth of Christ, someone somewhere has got to ask the question, who is this? Who is this Christ? What is this; his authority and his teaching, as Mark’s Gospel ask

Of all the billions of people who have ever lived, if the passage of time is marked by the birth of this one person, then surely this one person is worth checking out! What is this phenomenon? Time demands that we find out!

In 1926 Dr. James A Francis wrote 294 inspirational words which are so well known and they are entitled One Solitary Life. You have heard them before, and here is the ending:

‘All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that have ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life on mankind on earth as much as that One Solitary Life.’

It’s about time we seek out this phenomenon – to discover him for ourselves, this one solitary life.