Imprecision And Uncertainty Aren't The Same
During college, there was but one: Thunder Lizard, my alarm clock. The tone and timbre of that faithful herald of dawn suggested a bucket of bolts crashing through the room.
But the years handled Thunder Lizard roughly, and worn gears finally rendered him inoperable. His motor-driven replacement's intolerance of power outages caused me to be late for work, so another windup alarm was inevitable.
The inability to locate another heavy hitter like Thunder Lizard forced me to settle for a lightweight whose tightly clustered controls must have been designed for miniature fingers. And instead of a healthy bone-jarring clang, its alarm resembled jingling Christmas bells.
My current bedside clock emits an irritating, raucous beep that I'm seldom forced to hear. Conditioned by years of rising at 5:00 a.m., I usually awaken on my own--just not quite as early as before.
Despite this one respite, other alarms have shoehorned themselves into my everyday routine.
Though I never used the complicated oven timer during the entire 20 years in our last house, the simple digital kitchen timer in this new house finds constant usage. I plop six eggs into a pot of cold water, set the cooktop at 50 percent and withdraw nicely boiled eggs when the timer tells me that 20 minutes have passed. Two minutes for toast in the oven.
Now add a bit of complication. Put the pot of eggs on the cooktop, and set the timer for 18 minutes. Ready the toast and two slices of bacon. When the timer sounds, slide the toast into the oven. Stick the bacon into the microwave and set it for two minutes. Then when the microwave beeps, simultaneously remove eggs from pot, toast from oven, bacon from microwave. Precision cooking at its best--all because of accurate timers.
But for most of my life, certain timers have proven imprecise, imperfect or non-existent. I have often wished, for example, to know the time to speak up and the time to stay quiet. Or when to press on and when to withdraw. Or when to discipline a child and when to overlook transgressions.
But into those gaps of imprecision steps the alarm on my wrist watch, sounding at precisely 4:58 p.m. each day. For years it warned me to shut down my computer and scamper downstairs in time to catch my ride home from work. Today, however, it encourages me to observe a moment of thankfulness that such routine is past.
But I am determined to assign my watch's friendly chirrup a more significant role this New Year. I resolve to permit it to remind me to momentarily ponder this thought of King David the psalmist: "My times are in Thy hand."
Imprecision and uncertainty are not the same, and my inability to know does not invalidate the surety of God's control.
Copyright 2003 James McAlister
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