Time and Timing

I am preaching a sermon tomorrow entitled, "It's All a Matter of Timing." I'm not sure I will put all this in the sermon, but it has gotten me thinking. Some of the materials I used recently for a paper were on Albert Einstein. I was doing some work on the neurological functions of the brain as they relate to creativity. Einstein's life and self-understanding about his own thought processes are quite revealing. He may have been one of the most creative thinkers in the history of the world. I am convinced that all great thinkers have one thing in common - and it's not intelligence. It's the ability to think outside the box; to think creatively. But, I digress. Back to time.
Time is invisible. In order to believe in time you have to find some way to measure it or to measure its effects. For instance, we know that there is such a thing as time because we see its effects - our bodies age, children grow, a man's beard lengthens, flowers bloom, the sun rises and sets, things change as we observe them over, well, time. Like the Holy Spirit, whom we can only see through the effects of the Spirit, time is something we measure and understand through its effect on things. This is actually how Einstein explained the existence of the universe. He postulated that the universe was real because you could measure its effects. Bodies move through the universe and they are affected by that movement. By measuring those effects we know that there is a universe and, Einstein speculated, it can be measured.
Isn't it fascinating how something so invisible is so visible in our society. Looking at my computer screen there is a clock in the bottom right hand corner. It is more accurate than the digital clock on my desk because it is coordinated with more exacting time stamps through a signal received electronically. However, it is not completely accurate if compared to the official U.S. time clock, which they claim is accurate within 0.2 seconds. My question is, "How do they know what time is - it's invisible?" We have fooled ourselves into measuring a concept and believing that the measurement we make based on certain effects is accurate. It is only accurate to the extent that it measures what it claims to measure. And time, the invisible divine entity, cannot be measured unless you measure its effects.
I guess the lesson I gleaned from all of this is that, as a Christian, your life of faith is a lot like time. You cannot measure it other than by measuring its effects. The key to living the Christian life is to allow the Holy Spirit to work through you in such a way that the effect of your faith can be measured by the things, the objects, the love, the works, the testimony that hurdles through the universe. If the Word of God really lasts forever; and if the old Negro spiritual is true when it says, "Only What We Do for Christ Will Last" then it is our witness that measures eternity.
Time marches on is not true. What marches on is the measurement of the effects of time. My hair is graying, my tissue and muscles are less pliable, my eyesight is less clear, and my mind is, well, it actually is working better. Hmmmm. Not everything deteriorates with time.