What Time It Is (Friday Devotional)

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…

- Romans 13:11

On Tuesday morning, I woke up in my own bed for the first time in 10 days. Having spent more than a week traveling in Spain with my family, I was really glad to be home and anxious to get back in the swing of things. I’d go to work, the kids would go to school, and everything would go back to normal.

All three kids were awake by 5:15 AM.

That’s right, I hadn’t reckoned with that vicious consequence of international travel: jet lag. Even as bone-tired as we all were when we went to bed the night before, our bodies were still 7 hours ahead—and so while our clocks in Texas said 5:15 AM, our bodies thought it was 12:15 PM. It would take the better part of a week for us all to get fully back on schedule, and for us to truly know what time it was.

In a much broader sense, the Bible gives us a theological understanding of “what time it is.” We live in between the inauguration of the kingdom and its consummation, between Christ’s victory on the cross and the ultimate victory yet to come when he returns. Sin and darkness have already been defeated, but we await the day when faith becomes sight.

So given what time it is, believers are called to cast off the sins of yesterday and to pick up righteousness. We are no longer chained by darkness, and so we are called to live in the light of Christ. Soon and very soon the trials of this present day will be overwhelmed by the joys to come—and so our calling is to live into that future now, as citizens of the kingdom rather than of this world.

We know what time it is—time to wake up and walk into the daylight.