One Minute to Go
A few years ago, I walked into Currys or one of its competitors in order to buy a new washing machine. A sales assistant, whose monthly commission likely needed a boost, latched onto me as I inspected this model or that.
"What is it you’re looking for?”, she asked.
I explained that I just wanted a simple machine, with two buttons: 'on' and 'off'. She smiled, sympathetically. No such machine existed, and she went on to show me the various models, one of which I ended up purchasing. To this day, I use about two of the sixteen settings, one called ‘mixed’ and the other called ‘extra spin’. The rest all seem too complicated or unneccessary.
Apart from its complication, another minor feature causes me some irritation. When the laundry is done, the timer indicates that the door will release in a minute’s time. There I stand, washing basket at the ready, to hang on the line or drape on the maid. I wait. And I wait. It is the longest minute I have ever waited. This is not just a symptom of impatience, for I have timed it: the minute can take 4x 60 seconds to finally conclude. Perhaps its manufacturer, Montpellier (which I presume to be French), applies the same logic to that final minute as a typical Frenchman to his lunch hour. Is it performing some last-minute calculation about the cleanliness of the socks, or is it just unpunctual?
There is some tension in the Biblical warnings about the Lord Jesus’ return, and the end of history as we know it. We have been waiting for millennia, and yet we know it will be sudden and unexpected. The command to be watchful might indicate that we may detect its imminence. It is as though we have been in that final minute for two thousand years, and still we wait. Were the Victorians and Georgians wrong to ready themselves for it even though we now know that theirs was not the final generation? Might a people yet to come consider us foolish for readying ourselves for an event for which the timer remains on ‘1 minute’ but none of us saw its end?
Ours is not to know the day of the Lord’s return, but ours is the responsibility to be ready and prepared. This means living our lives as though the world could end tonight, but not panicking or failing to discharge our daily duties, lest it be decades or centuries off.
Be ready, therefore. That minute will end.
- Log in to post comments