The Ticking Clock

I hate that feeling of urgency.  That feeling that something needs to be done right now.  It can not be done later, next week, or next month.  Something needs to happen now.  I can almost hear the clock ticking down in my head.  I don’t know when the alarm will sound, signaling my time is up, but I know it’s soon.  Very soon.     

For those of you who don’t know me very well, I suffer from panic attacks.  This extreme anxiety I can feel rising up in my chest.  I can’t breathe.  The walls are closing in around me.  I want to run away, far away.  I’m not sure what triggers it, why they happen.  But they do and they come with out warning.  I can be in the middle of a store, driving in the car, or just wake up with this panic.  I feel helpless when they occur.  I almost feel like I’m going mad, which then makes me feel defeated because there’s a lack of control.  This is how I feel with this urgency.  The clock is tick, tick, ticking, and the alarm is going to sound soon.

So why do I have this feeling of urgency?  I’m healthy.  As far as I know my expiration date is not just around the corner.  I do not have somewhere on my calendar that I need to be and be prepared for.  What’s the hurry, what’s the rush?  I can tell you this feeling started right after I left Haiti.  There was a lack of hope there.  You can see it in their faces.  Here is a people group within these villages and they are dying.  Some are literally dying because of diseases and environment.  Others are dying because of their lack of hope.  They are unaware of the love waiting for them.  They do not know that someone loved them so much that he was stripped, beaten into being unrecognizable, and then nailed to a cross for the world to see.  Hope.  Hope that this miserable life is not the end.  Hope, that there is so much more out there.  Hope of the realization of a risen Savior.  People are dying, and it’s not just in Haiti.  It’s in the dense jungles of Papua, the busy city streets of China and that neighbor next door who has friends who continually block your driveway with their car.  People are dying, and who is going to show them the cure?  Who is going to tell them that there is hope?

 

Romans 10:14-15

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?

And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?

And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?

And how can they preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

 

The clock is ticking.  If you have accepted this gift of hope from Jesus then the clock is ticking for you too.  We are commanded:

 

Matthew 28:19-20

Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and

the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

 

Who are you going to share this hope with today?  Where is God going to take you?  The clock is ticking.