IT IS said that a week is a long time in politics and political events over the past few weeks have been moving at a pace, both nationally and internationally. 

Time is a strange thing. Sometimes it flies by, sometimes the waiting seems to last forever.

Our experience of time is affected by our situation and outlook at any one time. 

At the start of the summer holidays, the next school term seems an age away and yet, before we know it, we shall be looking back on the holiday season as a distant memory.

Each of us hope, and nowadays probably expect, to live to a ripe old age.

It was recently reported that life expectancy rising to the age of 150 years old is now not unthinkable.

But none of us know how long we will have on this earth and I am not sure I want to live to be 150 years old.

Part of the Christian message is that God wants us to live our lives to the full here and now and indeed have life in all its abundance. 

But do we live our lives to the full or just let days slip by; allow opportunities to bypass us; take people for granted and think we might make that phone call tomorrow?

God’s time frame is based on eternity; as the hymn puts it, “A thousand ages in thy sight are like an evening gone” (2 Peter 3:8). 

Whether we have our eyes set on eternity or a more temporal time frame it's easy to forget how precious time really is and that we should seize the day and live life to the full because that is, in part, what God has made us for.

REV JOHN SWANTON
South Cotswolds Team Ministry