All we need to do is mention the name and everyone knows exactly what the issue is.
        Walkerton.
        The name is now synonymous with water trouble. And while the trouble in that community is perhaps more pronounced than in others, the basic issue faces all Canadians.

What we once took for granted is now becoming almost scarce.
Fresh water.
There was a time not so long ago that every Canadian considered water as an endless wealth. It was just, well, there. Not so anymore.
It's a huge tragedy.
        Here we are, living with the world's largest supply of fresh water right on our doorstep, and we can't even get a drink without processing it to death.

        Ah, who cares if we squander a bit. We have so much. That was the old attitude. And that mentality led industry to dump ton after ton of toxic waste into rivers and streams, boaters to empty their gas tanks and waste holdings into the lake, towns to send raw sewage into it, and things began to choke.

Suddenly we woke up and realized that the fish were floating upside down, that walking on water was becoming closer to a human possibility in some localities, and that reaching over the side of the canoe for a quick drink was not such a smart thing to do anymore. Even the underground aquifers are now affected.

        An endless supply of fresh, clean drinking water? Hardly!

        Now perhaps we aren't guilty of taking part in the above atrocities. We've never dumped used motor oil in the ditch. We've always been careful with using environmentally friendly products that get flushed down the drain. We've sent letters to government for tighter pollution regulations.

        But maybe we've had the same sort of attitude in another area --- in time.
        Time -- we've got ALL kinds of it, right?

Think of it -- a whole year....
        365 days
        8,760 hours
        525,600 minutes
        31,536,000 seconds
                scads of time!

As we look at the beginning of a year, it seems like forever.
        All kinds of time.
                Virtually an endless supply.
                        Doesn't matter if we waste a bit.
                                Right?

Well, if that's how we feel at the beginning of the year, listen to the talk of people at the end of it:
        - Where's it gone?
        - My, how time flies!

Want to consider the real value of time?
Ask a student who failed about the value of one year.

Ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby about the value of one month.
Ask lovers waiting to meet about the value of one hour.
Ask the person who just avoided an accident about the value of one second.

Time. Where DID it go?
It seems to run like water through our fingers, and we don't realize it is gone until it is too late.

Psalm 90.10:

The length of our days is seventy years - or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

When we are young we look at the future and figure our lives will last forever.

Old age. Fifty? Not me!
        We've got time to squander.
        We can afford to sow a few wild oats, or just goof off.

        After all, we've got a lifetime to straighten up after.

Then a friend of ours gets married and moves away.
Or we hit the end of high school without even the foggiest clue of what we want to do with the rest of our lives.
Or a parent dies and we realize that now WE are the family's senior generation.

"Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away" says the hymn writer.
        "Teach us to number our days" says the psalmist.
                And so it is.

You know, if you study the structure and words of Psalm 90 carefully, there are two things that strike you.
 
 
 
 

First is the greatness of God. Greater than anything we could think of or imagine.
        We stand outside at night and look at an enormous universe. Sun and stars. Enormous raging balls of fire. And yet they are infinitely puny
beside their Creator, who put into place first the very space into which these lights were placed, then the lights, and the earth, and finally us,
        - placing us here while keeping track of everything, right down to the very hairs on our head.
        while we run around mumbling, "Where did the time go?"

        A great, great God. Infinite.

        We think we are pretty wise and experienced when we can look back and say, "Yes sir, those last 50 years or so have just flown by. Why the days after the War seem like just yesterday."

        But really. How does that stack up against a God who looks back and can say,
"Yes, those last 1000 years have just flown by. Why it seems like just yesterday that I was watching over the events of the human race in the days of the Romans and now they're sending up Space Shuttles, and playing with cell phones and computers."

        Yes, we stand before a great God.
        That is the first and most important thing of Psalm 90.

And the second thing, closely tied to the first, is this:
We are part of a very puny human race. Dust to dust, like grass that grows and withers in the same day, with little lives that end with a whimpered moan, here today and gone tomorrow.
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom says v.12.

I am thankful for occasions like New Year's Day. For as we stand on the threshold of a new Millennium, ready to open another package of time which is presented as a gift to us puny people by that incomprehensibly great God, we do well to prepare to open and handle that package with the greatest possible wisdom and care.

        Given the fact that time is NOT unlimited, and given the fact that it is a gift entrusted to us by such a wonderful and powerful God, we HAD BETTER want to be careful in using it.

        For there is going to come a moment when each of us will have to stand before the penetrating, revealing, judging eyes of God who will then demand an accounting from us of how we used our moments of time.

        Not that this means that everything has to be super serious, all work no play, down in the mouth. Not at all. Life and time as given by God has balance to it.
        I think of the famous words of Ecclesiastes 3?
There is a tremendous variety to time. On some occasions it asks us to do one thing. On another occasion time it demands we do the exact opposite:
        Loving/hating                 birth/death
        planting/uprooting          weeping/laughing
        embracing/confronting    building/tearing down
        speaking/listening

And for each there is a place, even a beautiful place.
        Ecclesiastes 3.11: God has made everything beautiful in its time.

The one who sits as Master Planner and Designer has made life so that there is a time and place for each and every occurrence.

        Many of you have reasonable facility with computers. Those programs which you use each day - you know that they can function only because of carefully put together bits of coding in long, complex sequence. If even one of them is wrong, the whole thing comes apart, hangs up, crashes. Which too much software does, anyway!

Compare that to God, who takes all the events of time, and carefully places everything in its proper place, making it all fit in the right balance.

        What remains for us is to discern how we fit, and how best we are to handle the various events, the little subroutines in the overall intricate coding called time,
that unique treasure which has been entrusted to us to manage as stewards of the Lord.

I said I am glad for events like New Year's Day. Mostly because it is a time that allows us to stop and evaluate who we are and where we are in time. It allows us to look back and think about -- carefully think about -- the big, and perhaps the not-so-big events that made up this past year.

        And in the shadow of those events, a shadow that is very dark for some of you,
and in the shadow of the wings of Almighty God and his son our Saviour Jesus Christ, we can think about where we are headed with our lives, and how we are handling our lives.

        Events like New Year's Day give us a chance to direct our lives again to the One who stands watching over us all, the one who is greater the very mountains and valleys across which we strut and fume through our 70 or 80 years.

And so we enter the new Millennium, asking God to give us a heart of wisdom.
Asking, and praying with Moses:
        May the favour of the Lord our God rest upon us;
        establish the work of our hands for us
        - yes, establish the work of our hands.