We use many expressions of time. We ‘pass’ the time, ‘spend’ time, ‘have not got enough’ time, and perhaps the worst phrase, ‘waste’ or ‘kill’ time.
The young person never really looks at the amount of time he has been allotted. True we don’t know how long we will live, but we can be certain we won’t be around for the change of the next century. We all understand that we have limited time. Time is the currency of our lives, we spend it every day and end up with a shorter amount.
This should mean that we are careful with time. Since time is the currency of our lives, what I end up doing with my time is in some way what my life is worth. If someone was to ask us to give our life in place of another for a large some of money we would all refuse. Nothing is worth giving up living. But what we don’t seem to comprehend is that what we spend the years of our life doing becomes its intrinsic value.
Every day we are faced with opportunities. Some will repeat themselves, others will be one-off occurrences. We decide what we do with them. Often, we are fooled into believing that all days are alike, but I want to introduce the idea to you that all days are unique. They occur only once, they will not resurface, and what we do in that day goes down into history forever, never to be changed. There is one more challenging and sobering thought in this process and that is that God will require us to give account for each day. I mention ‘each day’ as we often think that God will lump all our years into a single accounting. What if God goes through every day with us, what if he puts each day on a projector screen and asks us to account for every thought, action and word? It’s a scary thought, but perhaps one we should think about. There is enough evidence in the Bible of God expecting an accounting of every word and deed.
So what should we do? Perhaps we need to admit that we are not good in our use of time. In the light of God viewing every day moment by moment we see how we squander our time. By squander I don’t mean sit around doing nothing, but doing things that don’t really matter in terms of God and his Kingdom. Maybe the first step needs to be repentance.
As much as it might be good to know what we shouldn’t be doing with our time, we should also have a clear idea of what we should be doing. The Bible and prayer will furnish us with enough things God requires us to do. God has a specific purpose for each one of us and to achieve it we need to give it time.
It is a sobering thought that from the start to the end of his ministry Jesus required 3 1/2 years! Once we find what God has for us and we do it diligently we will find satisfaction, peace and a sense of having just the right amount of time.
Simon Smailus 