BY HARLEY STANTON

IME, CENTURIES, MILLENNIA, eternity. They're some of the most quoted words of the ages. Solomon said, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die" (Eccl. 3:1, 2, NRSV). We say "Time is of the essence," and "Time waits for no one." There's a time to reflect and a time to recharge.

We try to divide it, but time cannot be sliced. We seek to understand eternity by our understanding of time, but eternity has no beginning and no end, and our attempts to place slices of time into eternity are akin to placing a grain of salt in the ocean. Yet life is made up of time, and time is the essence of eternity.

From my window I look across the slums and apartments of Metro Manila, where both poverty and priceless treasures hold hands. Sirens blasting, fire engines roar past in their attempt to quell another flame. The soupy air scuds across the sky as a tropical storm drops its torrents, and the doors and windows rattle at their threatened destruction. Birds dive and turn as if surfing a giant wave across the sky.

For many in this situation life is a search for survival. Life becomes an expedient act of the moment, the Nike philosophy of "just do it." But what we do in time impacts eternity.

Even the longest lives here are short.

Several years ago I traveled to Nagano to speak at a symposium that was to influence the outcome of the 1998 Winter Olympics. My companion was a researcher in Japan, and he indicated that in Japan there were more than 3,000 people older than 100. (Since then I think it has expanded to around 5,000.) Because of low infant mortality, an abundant nutrient supply, some good genes, and an excellent health system, the Japanese are the longest-living people on earth.

We reflected on the aging of people and discussed the issues of antioxidants and some of the other likely causes of aging. My doctor friend indicated that the longest-living district, or prefecture, in Japan was in the area that grows wasabi-a spicy horseradish and a very rich source of antioxidants-implying that the wasabi was the cause. Though I'm not sure this has been validated, our conversation led him to suggest that there are four aspects to time.

Chronological Time
Greenwich in London provides us with the line that sets our global computation of time. Adjusted to our local setting, our watches, computers, cell phones, radios, and televisions all keep this time ticking in front of us. And digital time keeps satellites in space.

This is mechanical time, in a sense. In other words, to meet our daily needs and convenience, we have divided the time of our lives into segments, as though it's something that functions as a machine.

I'm kept abundantly aware of this, as my wife has taken an overly strong interest in timepieces, and clocks around our house tick day and night. Grandfather, grandmother, digital, and domestic-all chiming and ticking, all enabling us to know what time it is.

Physiological Time
Some people age more quickly than others. And there are cases in which people age either slower or faster than is considered normal. The "learned boy of L¨ubeck" lived only four and a half years, but in that time mastered a dozen languages, read and wrote scores of musical works, and succeeded in an amazing amount of accomplishments. In his case, it was more his donation than his duration that left his mark.

Poet and literary scholar James Mcauley had to confront the passage of time in his own life when told that he had colon cancer. After considering his options, he decided to proceed with an operation to remove a significant section of his colon. During the period of life remaining, he wrote some of his most poignant poems, published in his work Time Given, a fitting description of the extension to his life. On one occasion when asked about his operation for cancer, he replied, "Better a semicolon than a full stop."

Some people seem to age more rapidly. Habits such as smoking cause premature wrinkling and aging; and exposure to elements such as ultraviolet light and radiation can accelerate the aging process. There are rare forms of disease that cause progeria (rapid aging), even in those who are still young.

Psychological Time
This might be called dream time. To the indigenous Australian this was a most important time, a time to review one's place in the community, the land, and the earth.

In our lives of haste the importance of taking time out becomes increasingly relevant. For people forever on the rush, the need to "take time" from their busy schedules is of extreme importance. We need to take time to watch the puffy clouds trundling across the azure sky, to stand in awe of the restless waves, to sit on a park bench and in a relaxed mode watch the passersby.

Sometimes, when we are in the presence of an engaging person or doing something that we greatly enjoy, the moments just slip away, and we often reflect, "I didn't realize the time. It's passed so quickly."

Psychological time involves our frame of mind and our attitude to the immediate environment. It is sometimes necessary to disengage our own lives from the world and become transcendent in thought and ready for benevolent action. I consider this to be one of God's ordained methods to help us cope.

Religious Time
This could be called God's time, a time when one thinks of eternity. Here, time and eternity stand in tension. The times of our lives are in the hands of God's eternity, so to speak, and in God's time we understand our own selves, the place we hold in the divine scheme of things.

I'm reminded of the remarkable story of Arthur Stace. During the depression in Australia in the 1920s and 1930s, meals were provided in a church hall on Broadway in Sydney. On one occasion about 300 men were present, mostly men who were down-and-out, depressed by life and circumstance. On the stage of the hall were six people, neatly dressed, looking very clean, and with an air of respectability. Stace asked the man next to him, a well-known criminal, "Who are they?"

"I'd reckon they'd be Christians," the man replied.

Stace responded, "Well, look at them and look at us. I'm going to have a go at that they've got." And with this, he slipped down on his knees and began to pray.

Determined to break from his addiction to alcohol following this experience, Stace shortly thereafter found a job working for three pounds a week at Maroubra. Some months later, listening to a Baptist street preacher, he heard him make the following statement: "I wish I could shout 'eternity' through the streets of Sydney." That remark sparked in him a powerful urge to write "Eternity" everywhere, an urge that became a passion. And over the years, a piece of chalk in hand, he wrote the word "Eternity" on the footpaths of Sydney more than a half million times.

How fitting, then, that the Australian authorities would use that same word to frame the millennial celebrations with the coming of the year 2000. As people around the world watched the fireworks celebration over the Sydney Harbor Bridge, they saw spelled out the word "Eternity," reminding all of the passion that had propelled this committed man. A quiet, self-effacing man, Stace was confronted by the power of a word that questions the destiny of every person, and subsequently framed the ultimate question for millions of people.

God placed a slice in time that we might begin to understand eternity. We need time to reflect, to unwind from the 24-hour days, from the eight-day weeks, and from the crush of cities that never stop.

And this leads me to the most important time of all: therapeutic time. That's Sabbath. God intended that in this time humanity would stop, come apart, and reflect on who we are in the greater scheme of things. It's a time that was intended to recharge our batteries and provide perspective on both time and eternity.

Sometimes we make a burden of what was intended as a blessing. Sometimes we neglect to make God's time the therapy that it was intended to be.

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Harley Stanton is a scientist employed by the World Health Organization. He writes from Manila, Philippines, where he manages the Men of Praise, a 30-voice men's choir.