My Generation: Time In a Bottle

[Yes, I’m really borrowing three songs to create a blog title and to merge ideas. Every generation loves their pop culture, mine is no different and neither is yours. The song titles are The Who’s, My Generation and Jim Croce’s, Time in a Bottle. Weaved in and out of this post there are innuendo of The Byrd’s, Turn, Turn, Turn. My use of these songs is very deliberate. I'm hoping that when people listen to these songs they will think about what I've said here and it will leave a mark for posterity.]

In Acts 13, Luke records one of three of Paul's evangelistic messages to unbelievers. Ironically, this is a message to unbelievers but also a reminder to believers. The first of Paul’s messages is in Acts, geographically in Pisidian Antioch. In this passage Paul makes reference to the great Israelite King David and states.

Acts 13:32, 34-36 32 “We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus…God raised him from the dead so that he will never be subject to decay. As God has said, ‘I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.’ So it is also stated elsewhere: ‘You will not let your holy one see decay.’ Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his ancestors and his body decayed. But the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay.

There is something dramatic but sublime stated here, “Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep…”

The duration of life in many ways is an inadequate period from the merely earthly point of view. Fifty years of work in this world, then—that is the most we can reasonably look for, after we are equipped and before we’re on deaths door. There is not much time to lose; our own generation is a quantity that is often limited in opportunity. Yet it is one great opportunity from first to last. It’s very brevity accentuates the greatness of any accomplishments we can achieve within that small window of time. To live and work in a world like ours means to bear and battle our way through it. In light of this struggle, we inevitably look to a higher existence. Otherwise, what is the point of such a brief life? Are we best using the time on our lives or are we wasting it in frivolous pursuits?

In particular this passage mentions David’s ‘own generation’. Why?

The words suggest a thought that a man has a lasting personal relation to the time upon which his earthly experience is cast. It sort of hints that the period of the world’s history upon which our personal relations center is the only time we'll ever truly have an impact in this world for good or for bad. In short, our history affects history in the larger scale of things just as David’s did. History therefore bears the marks of everything our personalities, actions and labors impacted. Our presence alone on this earth exerts a force on everyone in history from this point forward. In this perspective, everyone’s life is effectual and nothing is ineffectual...as if in accord with a plan. To take up the cause of evil leaves a negative impact. To take up the cause of the good and Gospel leaves a positive one. ‘Our’ generation whether it be the Boomers, the X’ers, the Millennials, The Y’ers… we all leave impressions in our generations that bleed down perpetually into the next ones.

Ephesians 5:15–16 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

Our experience of ‘world-life’ and ‘world-history’, brief as it is, and passing rapidly from successor to successor is forever bound up with the circumstances of our own journey, and has gathered into it memories. A man is called to note and to know the peculiar character of his own time.—“His own generation.” There is individuality about every generation. It has its own disposition, temperament, moods, capabilities, opportunities, not all of which are shared in the same measure by any other generation. Each generation has something in it of every generation that has been; but it also has an originality in it to give a unique contribution to itself and upon the generations following. Intelligence about the past is mostly of value according to how it helps us to be intelligent about the present. In other words, what do we contribute that will be useful and helpful to others in our generation and succeeding ones. Will it be a blessing or a curse? Ephesians 5:16 specifically tells us to redeem or use time to the best of our ability.

Ephesians 5:16 uses the word for time kairon/καιρόν meaning a very specific time that is set within in an overarching time or era chronos/xρόνος. A unique time…like your/our generation for instance. It is time in a bottle so to speak. It is the same type of time Jesus refers to when he says that His time has come (for his crucifixion) in John 12:23-24. As Ecclesiastes specifically tells us about time…there is a time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3) in the grand scheme. Perfectly allotted, planned or known by God. In fact, time or a generation are lives and ideas to be poured out on succeeding generations that unfold into eternity.

So what do we see in Paul’s brief statement of King David. We see brevity of life and purpose. Invariably David’s life with all its ups and downs, good and evil was remembered as a life in service to His God. Ours should be the same or otherwise much of it is vanity, stupidity and irrelevancy. The only reason we still speak of David was because of his purposes in God’s Sovereign plan and his foreshadowing of the Messiah. Even David’s idiotic moments in his life led to a life that unwaveringly points to Christ. At the epicenter of David’s biography lies Christ’s biography. The great Christian truth: It’s about Christ…the history, the lives, the generations...all of it.

So what should that life and the generation it contributes to be? That’s the big existential question, isn’t it? Why am I here, for how long and to what end? 

In an instant Paul encapsulated David’s entire life. A lightning strike that flashes into existence and out again. The words from Paul are as striking as they are short. It is a reminder that there is no wasted time in a human life. The time needs to be redeemed or the best use must be made of it. Paul tells us in this brief Davidic biography how….speaking of the Resurrection and its affect on ALL generations. Paul mentions David because of whom he pointed to. In the brevity of David’s epitaph we see the eternality of Christ and our future in which we embrace the Resurrection.

David and through him Christ… are introduced at once as to their purpose in abbreviated form in Paul’s divinely inspired punctuated statement. A life lived without purpose is pointless but Paul state’s David’s and Jesus’ succinctly. David is a foreshadowing of Christ and a lineage by which the King will come. Christ’s life a foreshowing of Resurrection. Resurrection being essentially a foreshadowing of eternal life that will lead to an eternal state that removes the need for the concept of a generations and time bound distinction completely. All other matters like the time, birth, educa­tion, social environment, plans and difficulties, conflicts, achieve­ments and inevitably death are but incidents or episodes that become irrelevant in the eternal scale. Time itself becomes irrelevant. Generations and lives pass away in the arrow of time but the purpose to which the lives and time point is eternal.  They point to an eternal God.