Preparing for a mission in their parish, the enthusiastic team entrusted with getting the show on the road decided to look for innovative ways to advertise the event.

A large banner which could be strung across the front of the church was planned, knowing that it would attract the attention of the thousands who passed each day on their way to and from town.

The message was simple but challenging: You cannot recycle time, but you can use it well.

But it wasn’t that simple: the message was cleverly disguised in a series of icons, which had to be translated.

The first phrase began with a ewe – a female sheep – and was followed by a tin can, a knot in a rope, and the green recycling logo, before ending with a large clock to signify time.

The parish priest had enormous fun listening to parishioners and others trying to unravel the message.

Some of those whose first language wasn’t English made great strides in solving the riddle, but couldn’t understand why a sheep should have such trouble with recycling!

We live in a busy world and many of us complain that we haven’t got time even for the things we consider of real importance.

Yet deep down most of us are honest enough to recognise that we don’t manage our time very well and that we often waste time or procrastinate, looking for distractions.

If there is one thing that defines Mark’s Gospel it is that right from the beginning there is a sense of urgency.

Mark is keen to let us know that now is the time for action.

He is forever telling us that things happened “at once”.

There is no time for delay.

Jesus begins his public ministry with the words “The time has come”.

And the first apostles are called and follow him “at once”.

This message is reinforced for us today by Paul’s insistence with the Corinthians that they should not waste time on things that are no longer of importance.

We might think that he rather overdoes things, suggesting that those with wives should live as though they had not, and so on.

However, it is worth reminding ourselves that Paul really did think that Jesus was due to return any day and that everyday life would soon be over and done with.

In his later letters, he tempers his approach and offers a longer-term perspective on things.

All this is in stark contrast to the story of Jonah.

We hear about his arrival in Nineveh and his call to the people to repent.

But remember that Jonah, like so many of his counterparts, was a reluctant prophet.

He was trying to escape his commission from God when the ship he was fleeing on was caught in a mighty storm, whereupon he confessed and was thrown overboard.

Only when he had been spat out on the shore by the sea creature did he dry himself off and accept his mission.

There is a touch of the Jonah in most of us.

There are tasks that we know await our attention, yet we find all kinds of excuses to avoid them, either because we can’t be bothered, or because we fear the consequences, or because we fear failure.

The mission that inspired the banner about not being able to recycle time invited the parishioners to think about our Lord’s statement: “The time has come.”

To begin with they pondered that powerful passage in the book of Ecclesiastes, which tells us that there is a time for every season under heaven.

And then each evening they focused on a different aspect of the gift of time: a time for stillness, a time for healing, a time for searching, a time for growth, a time for others and a time for rejoicing.

Jesus provides us with the perfect model when it comes to the use of time.

For all the urgency in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus finds time to be still and to pray, he always has time for others and he is not afraid to rejoice at the appropriate time.

When it comes to searching, isn’t it interesting that while we think it is up to us to spend our lives searching for meaning, searching for purpose, searching for God, the Gospel reminds us that actually it is the other way round?

We have a God who is searching for us.

Jesus says to us, as he said to his first disciples: “Follow me.”