Time Is Wrong

Choosing to write about St. Bede and his work on calculating the date of Easter sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole (pun fully intended). I found myself wondering why the measurement of time isn’t… easier. We make adjustments constantly—daylight savings, leap years—because time refuses to package itself neatly. If our units of measurement are the problem, could we simply redefine a “minute” or a “day” and finally get a standard that doesn’t require so much tweaking?

Apparently not.
That’s not a thing.

But why not?

Bede believed that God’s universe is ordered and harmonious, and I agree, so it seems reasonable that our watches and calendars would fall in line with that harmony. A day is a day, a week is a week, a year is a year. Simple.

Except it isn’t!

We have to keep undoing the drift that happens when we try to put a box around something like time. This doesn’t mean the universe lacks order; it means our tools are insufficient. We’re trying to measure something vast and cosmic with instruments built for convenience, not truth.

I can’t help but think of C.S. Lewis, who loved to poke at the edges of time. He saw our discomfort with it and our constant surprise at its natural effects as the smoking gun that points toward eternity. In Mere Christianity, he describes God not as someone moving along the timeline with us, but as the Author of the entire page. Our watches and calendars are like characters in a story trying to track the Author’s pen strokes. Of course they fail! They’re trying to measure a shadow of a higher reality with physical tools.

But our strange relationship with time isn’t just about leap years or complicated Easter calculations. It’s not even about being surprised by how big the kids are getting or how old the person in the mirror seems to be getting or how quickly a holiday has arrived. It’s the way we prioritize our time that reveals the deeper problem.

The big, meaningful things—the things that actually shape our souls—are the easiest to postpone. We’ll get to them “later,” when life is calmer, when we have more margin, when the stars align. Meanwhile, we tie ourselves in knots trying to reclaim minutes for chores or meaningless work tasks, as if shaving ten seconds off a to‑do list is the pinnacle of stewardship. I say this fully convicted, by the way, wondering when I might make time to visit a close friend whilst celebrating a minor efficiency gain at work.

Lewis had a name for this.

He called it the problem of First Things and Second Things. When we put Second Things (the urgent, the mundane, the measurable) ahead of First Things (the eternal, the relational, the meaningful), we lose both. As he wrote, “You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.”

By frantically trying to “reclaim minutes,” we lose the peace required to enjoy them. We treat time like a resource to conquer rather than a medium to inhabit.

There’s a psychological layer here too. In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis suggests that the “Noise” of the world is one of the enemy’s favorite tools—a way to keep us from thinking about who we really are. If we stay busy “getting ahead,” we never have to face the terrifying, beautiful weight of our own eternity. Chores are safe. They have a beginning and an end. Soul work does not.

Focusing on the mundane gives us the illusion of control. We can finish the task, check the box, and feel like we’ve won against time. But the meaningful work—the work of the kingdom, the work of love, the work of becoming—requires us to admit that we cannot control time at all. Deep relationships demand vulnerability. Spiritual formation demands surrender. Eternity demands attention.

We are not just “saving time.” We are inhabiting a Now that belongs to the Author of the entire story.

Maybe the itch we feel—the drift, the misalignment, the sense that time never quite fits—is the reminder that we were made for another world. As Lewis said, there are no ordinary people and no “mere” mortals. We are immortal beings wearing temporal suits that don’t quite fit.

Time isn’t wrong because the universe is flawed.
Time is wrong because we are measuring eternity with a wristwatch.

Finding Rhythm

If time refuses to obey us, maybe that’s mercy. Maybe the drift and the misalignment are the gentle reminders that control was never the point. We don’t need better calendars; we need better surrender.

The old truths—the ones Bede guarded, the ones Lewis translated for modern ears—keep calling us back to this: God has never written His story in minutes. He writes in rhythms. Seasons. Cycles. Rising and resting. Remembering and returning. Our ancestors understood this instinctively. They shaped their lives around feasts and fasts, not productivity hacks. They trusted that holiness could be rehearsed, not scheduled.

We, on the other hand, keep trying to cram eternity into a planner square.

But when we let go of control—when we let the ancient rhythms interrupt our modern hurry—something shifts. We remember who we are. We remember what matters. We remember that time is not a cage but a carrier, a vessel that holds memory, meaning, and the slow work of God.

Time won’t line up neatly for us. But it will lead us, if we let it, back to the One who holds it. Back to the rhythms older than clocks and calendars. Back to the story we’re meant to remember and rehearse.

Because in the end, the goal isn't to master time, it's to be shaped by the God who stands outside it.