From the Desk of Pastor Stephen L Girsh, Sr.
The Revealing of the Clock
Abbott Methodist Church | May 26, 2026
"To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven." — Ecclesiastes 3:1
Dear friends and family of Abbott UMC,
I want to talk to you today about something you probably walked past this morning without giving it a second thought. There is a clock somewhere in your house — maybe on the kitchen wall, maybe on the microwave, maybe just your phone sitting face-up on the counter. You glance at it, you note the time, and you move on. It is one of those things we see without really seeing. The hands turn. The seconds click by. And life keeps moving right along with it.
But there was a moment — I bet you have had it, too — where you looked at the clock and something shifted. Maybe it was late and you had lost track of the hours. Maybe it was early and you suddenly realized you had overslept. Whatever the moment, the clock told you something you were not fully ready to hear. It said: this is what time it really is. Not what you assumed. Not what you hoped. But the actual, honest truth of the hour you were standing in.
I believe that is exactly what God is doing for many of us right now — in our personal lives, in our nation, and in His Church. He is pulling back the curtain and showing us the clock. He is not trying to frighten us. He is trying to awaken us. Because the question He is asking is not just "what time is it on the wall?" — it is a deeper, more searching question than that. He is asking: What time is it in your soul? What time is it in this nation? What time is it for the Body of Christ?
I want to walk through that question with you today. Pull up a chair. This one is worth sitting with for a few minutes.
Section One — God Has a Clock
"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven."
— Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NKJV)
The very first thing I want to establish is this: God is not winging it. I know that might sound like a simple thing to say, but you would be surprised how many of us — myself included, at various points in life — have functionally lived as though the universe is just sort of stumbling forward without a plan. As though history is one long accident. As though the things happening in our world, in our families, and in our own hearts are just random noise with no Author behind them.
But Solomon, in the opening of Ecclesiastes chapter three, pushes back hard against that idea. He says there is a season for everything. A time for every purpose under heaven. He is not talking about randomness — he is talking about order. Divine, purposeful, sovereign order. There is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot. This is not fatalism — it is the declaration of a God who holds history in His hands and moves it according to His own perfect timetable.
Think of it this way. There is a world of difference between a person who wanders through their day with no schedule, no plan, no direction — just drifting from one thing to the next and hoping something good happens — and a surgeon who walks into the operating room at precisely 7:00 in the morning, knowing exactly what procedure begins, knowing exactly what needs to happen and in what order, having prepared for months for this moment. The wandering person may be a perfectly fine individual. But the surgeon's patient is not worried about whether the doctor has a plan. They are counting on it.
Friends, you and I are not adrift in a universe run by a wandering God. We serve the Surgeon. He has a plan. He has a schedule. He has a divine calendar that has been running since before the foundation of the world. And right now — right here in this moment of history — the calendar says something specific. Which brings me to the second thing I feel led to share with you.
Section Two — The Clock Is Being Revealed
"And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed."
— Romans 13:11 (NKJV)
The Apostle Paul wrote those words to the church in Rome, and I want you to notice the weight in them. He does not say "it might be getting late." He does not say "you may want to think about waking up sometime soon." He says it is high time to awake out of sleep. High time. As in — the hour is already upon us. The alarm has not just gone off; it has been going off. And some of us have been hitting snooze.
I know that person. I have been that person. There is something about the snooze button that is almost universally understood — you know you need to get up, you fully intend to get up, and yet somehow the pillow wins one more time. Five more minutes. Just five more minutes. But then five becomes ten, and ten becomes twenty, and suddenly you are scrambling in a panic because what you thought you had time for, you no longer have time for.
I believe God is revealing the clock to His people right now precisely because the spiritual snooze button has been pressed too many times. We have been lulled — by comfort, by distraction, by busyness, by the noise of the world — into a kind of spiritual sleepwalking. We go through the motions. We show up when it is convenient. We keep our faith in a tidy little corner of our lives where it does not cost us much or demand too much of us. And all the while, God has been standing at the door, knocking, saying: Do you know what hour this is?
This is not meant to be a message of condemnation — not even close. Paul was not condemning the Roman church when he wrote those words. He was loving them. He was saying: I care about you too much to let you sleep through what God is doing. There is something happening right now — spiritually, nationally, in the lives of people all around you — and you cannot afford to miss it. The person who jumps up because they realize they are late for something critical is not a panicked person. They are an awake, aware, purposeful person. That is what God is calling us to be.
Section Three — Redeeming the Time
"See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil."
— Ephesians 5:15–16 (NKJV)
I love that word — redeem. We hear it in the church a lot, mostly in connection with salvation, and rightly so. But here in Ephesians, Paul uses it in a very specific and practical way. The Greek word he uses is exagorazo — it means to buy back, to rescue from loss, to make the most of an opportunity before it passes. He is talking about time itself. He is saying: the days are not neutral — they carry weight, they carry purpose, and they carry a price tag. And God is calling us to buy them back. To redeem them. To not let them slip through our fingers unclaimed.
Let me be honest with you about something. I think one of the quiet tragedies of the Christian life is the accumulated weight of moments we did not redeem. The nudge we felt to call someone — and we did not call. The impression to pray for a neighbor — and we let it pass. The opportunity to say "I love you" or "I'm sorry" or "Can I help you?" — and the moment slipped by, and then the season changed, and the chance was gone.
I have known people — and maybe you have too — who carried something like that for years. A parent who passed before a hard conversation could be had. A friendship that drifted apart because neither person made the move to close the gap. A calling, clear as a bell, that got buried under the busyness of regular living until the person who heard it could no longer quite remember what it sounded like. I am not telling you this to bring guilt. I am telling you this because every single one of those moments was redeemable — while there was still time.
And here is the good news that I hold onto with both hands: for most of us, the clock is still ticking. The moment has not yet fully passed. The relationship can still be repaired. The call can still be answered. The prayer can still be prayed. But redeeming time requires something of us — it requires us to stop drifting, to walk, as Paul says, circumspectly — carefully, deliberately, with our eyes wide open to what is right in front of us. Not as fools. As the wise.
Section Four — What the Clock Is Saying Right Now
"Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time?"
— Luke 12:56 (NKJV)
I want to be careful and honest with you here, because I think this is the sharpest part of the message — and it is the part that cuts closest to home. Jesus said those words to a crowd of people who were perfectly capable of reading the weather. They could look at the sky and tell you whether rain was coming. They were observant. They were intelligent. They were not foolish people in the ordinary sense of the word. And yet Jesus looked at them with what I can only imagine was a kind of holy frustration, a deep pastoral grief, and He said: You can read a cloud formation, but you cannot read the hour you are living in?
That question lands on me hard, friend. Because I think it is fair to ask it of ourselves today. We are very good at reading the signs around us — the news, the economy, the culture, the weather. We can analyze trends and predict outcomes in a dozen different arenas of life. But when it comes to the spiritual hour — the moment God is marking in our personal stories and in the story of His Church — sometimes we are the last to see it.
So let me ask you, as your pastor and as your friend, what is the clock saying to your marriage right now? Not in general — yours. Is there something being revealed about a drift that has gone on long enough, a distance that needs to be closed, a tenderness that needs to be rekindled? What is the clock saying to your children — are there conversations you know in your heart you need to have while there is still time to have them, while they are still under your roof and still willing to listen?
What is the clock saying about your faith — not your church attendance, not your religion, but your actual, living, breathing walk with God? Has it grown warm and close, or has it cooled without you quite noticing? What is the clock saying about your involvement in the life of this church and this community? Are you using the gifts God placed in you, or are they sitting in a drawer somewhere, still in the package? And what about your unfinished business with God — the thing you know you have been putting off, the surrender you have been circling but not quite landing on? What does the clock say about that?
These are not comfortable questions. But they are the questions a good pastor has to be willing to ask. And I believe they are the questions a loving God is asking of each of us in this season.
Closing — The Clock Is Still Ticking, But Not Forever
"...If you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you."
— Revelation 3:3 (NKJV)
I want to close with something I genuinely believe with all my heart, and I want you to hear it not as a warning designed to frighten you, but as a word of love from a God who is desperately fond of you. The clock is a gift. Every single tick of it is grace. Every morning you wake up and the sun comes through that window is an act of mercy from a God who did not have to give you another day — but He did. Because He is not finished with you yet. Because there are still things He wants to do in you and through you and for you.
But here is what is also true, and we would not be honest with each other if I left it out: the clock does not run forever. There is an hour that is coming — for each of us personally, and for history itself — when what was possible is no longer possible. When the season closes. When the door shuts. Jesus used the image of a thief in the night — not to terrify us, but to awaken us. Because a thief does not announce himself. He comes when you are not watching. And the people of God are called to be the ones who are watching.
So what do I want you to do with all of this? I do not want you to walk away from this page anxious or heavy-hearted. I want you to walk away awake. I want you to go back to your kitchen this week, look at that clock on the wall, and let it be a small, daily reminder: God is revealing something about this hour. Am I paying attention?
Maybe this week, you make that phone call you have been putting off. Maybe you sit down with your spouse and have the real conversation, the one underneath the surface conversation. Maybe you spend some extra time on your knees, not because you have to, but because you recognize that this is a moment that calls for prayer. Maybe you say yes to something God has been nudging you toward, and you stop giving Him the five-more-minutes response.
The clock, friends, is still ticking. The grace of God is still running. The door is still open. And God — the same God who holds every season in His hands, who woke up the Apostle Paul's heart in Rome and spoke through the prophets of old — that same God is speaking right now, to you, wherever you are reading this. He is not yelling. He is not condemning. He is just gently, lovingly, persistently asking one question:
"What is God revealing to you about the time you are in?"
I hope you will sit with that question. I hope you will bring it to Him in prayer. And I hope — with everything in me — that when the clock speaks, you will be ready to hear it.
I am praying for each one of you. It is a privilege to be your pastor.
Blessings to you,
Pastor Stephen
Abbott Methodist Church | Abbott, Texas