When are we?

As an Australian, and I am sure it has wider usage, I often start a conversation or give a greeting by saying - How are you?  Truth is I am not really interested in how the person is.  It is more about using an acceptable, cultural way for greeting another.  It is the same in Thai, except they use two other, simple phrases, which likewise hold specific, other meanings, but are used as a way to say - Hi!  These phrases both fit into their culture.  

In Thai, you will often be asked - Where are you going?  I think to myself , "none of your business".  Or they ask me every morning, when I go to the office - Have you eaten yet?   It took me an age to work out why so many others were interested in my eating habits.    

Aren't we funny in our ways, as we look to indirectly show simple concern.  I read St Augustine's way of doing the same, which just immediately hit me as, unlike our ways, being so direct.  He had found a creative way to make a real impact on one's life.  His concern for another was expressed by a radically, different question to tap into human consciousness, asking - When are we?  

On reading this, I felt absolutely confronted by his approach.  There is no getting around it, as it places you in time, you have no way out and you have to respond to it in some decent and direct way.  Unlike geographical positioning, you are less able to hide or run away.  

Where am I in time?  Real time situated in a real world.  God is not defined by time but not even God runs away from time.  It is within the boundaries of time that we experience the chaos, the struggles, the craziness, the goodness of life, the love of God and others.  Our life, our world may be falling apart, as it was for Augustine, with the collapse of the Roman Empire.  We share that same experience.  It does not go away, but neither does time collapse and, within its confines, people continue to strive to struggle, to live good lives, to look after each other.  Evil remains but it never destroys what cannot be taken away  - time for life, and loving and living.    

We are in our time.  It is the best of times for us in living life and making our contribution to the world.  Time may be only bad if we make it that way, and how often and easily we do that.