Jack Hardaway
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Once upon a time my mother did Green Stamps.
T’was the season of the green stamp.
A wondrous season in my life.
Pages and pages of stamps filling those little books, year after year.
And the most amazing things would be brought home, purchased with those green stamp books.
I still have the kitchen stool Mom purchased with those stamps. It was built to last.
But it is the Green Stamp Wall Clock that I have on my mind.
The Green Stamp Wall Clock was on the wall in our kitchen, right by the kitchen table where I did my homework every day as a young child.
I spent a lot of time at that table doing my homework, every afternoon, year after year, listening to that clock click and tick every second all along the way, as relentless as the tide, and the sun, and the moon. There was no escaping ticking and the clicking of the Green Stamp Wall Clock. It was built to last.
It kind of drove me crazy.
I became like the Pirate Captain Hook in Peter Pan who was beside himself in agitation whenever he heard the tic toc of the crocodile that swallowed the alarm clock.
I rebelled against the march of time. I became a saboteur of all things that click and tick.
To this day I can’t be in the same room as a ticking clock. When no one is looking I pull the batteries out and silence the little menace. That could possibly be why the clock in the sacristy never seems to work…
The clicking and the ticking of time relentlessly passing.
We begin a new year today, keeping time, not with clicking and ticking, but with song, with candles burning down, with calendars revealing something new every day, with a fever of activity, with only so many shopping days left.
Tis the season.
And the passing of time comes with a warning, that we are running out of time to abound in love.
The time is now to abound in love. That is the message of the Oldest Writing in the New Testament, the oldest Christian proclamation, The First Letter to the Thessalonians.
Let love abound, the time is short.
When the world falls apart it means it is time to abound in love. Like leaves on the fig tree announcing summer, the time is now.
The Time is short, it is time to love.
Love is relentless.
That is the meaning of the Advent season.
Love wins. Give in.
Time is short, abound in love, tis the season.
It turns the dark tomb of Good Friday into the empty tomb of Easter Morning.
It turns the relentless menace of human history into the inevitable love song of the prophets, apostles, martyrs, saints, angels and archangels.
Tis the season.
To quote the Bellamy Brothers and Gene Cotton:
So let your love flow like a mountain stream,
and let your love grow with the smallest of dreams,
and let your love show and you’ll know what I mean
It’s the season
The clock is ticking.
Let Love abound.