License to live

I enjoy many of the James Bond film songs. One of these didn’t become popular until 25 years after the initial release. I refer to Louis Armstrong’s ‘We Have all the Time in the World’, which was heard in the film ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. This 1969 United Artists release didn’t have a theme tune as such, the Louis Armstrong track was played as incidental music part way through the story. ‘We Have all the Time in the World’ was the title of the final chapter in Ian Fleming’s book.

The older we get the faster time goes, it's true isn't it? If we once felt that we had all the time in the world do we still?

In an interview on Radio 4 many years back, the late Billy Graham, the well known evangelist, was asked, what in his life did he consider to be the most profound issue? His answer was "The brevity of time."

God implores us in the Bible to seek Him whilst there is still time, "if today you hear His voice do not harden you heart, for today is the day of salvation". Yes, in modern life we know all about timescales, priorities, pressure and urgent tasks. Yet when God speaks to us of urgency we are offended and seem to think as far as establishing a relationship with Him is concerned we have all the time in the world. "I'll think about that sort of thing when I'm older or another day when I'm less pressured". Of course another day never comes.

We are, by nature, blinded to the fact that we don't have all the time in the world, in fact we don't know what even the next hour has in store for us; the cardiac arrest of Danish footballer, Christian Eriksen, brought that home to many TV viewers.

We have no control over time, whether we doze, dawdle or dash, time (and therefore life) slips by! It is God who is not only the true Time Lord but the Eternal Lord. Jesus defines what eternal (or everlasting) life is when he says; ‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.’

So, eternal life turns out to be our experience of knowing God, and this ‘knowing’ is received by placing our trust in the person of Jesus. No wonder Billy Graham often quoted the Gospel of John, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life".

Ian Fleming’s character, James Bond, was wrong to say that we have all the time in the world. Jesus, however, speaks of eternal things in the world to come, which are to be received and grasped.