Time
part 1
A valuable
resource
For each one of us
what resource should be extremely valuable to us? I say should be
valuable to us because some of us value this particular resource more
than others. It's a resource that has been given to each one of us, with
some of us maybe getting a little bit more than others. It's a resource
that no matter how much money you have, you can't buy any more than your
allocated portion. What is this resource? Well your looking at the
instrument that measures it if you look at the watch on your wrist:
The resource is
time.
Time is a valuable
resource because we all have only been allocated our 70 years, give or
take a few years (or in the case of some of us give or take a couple of
decades!). As we live our lives we find that time passes on relentlessly
in a fixed rhythm:
60 seconds every
minute, 60 minutes every hour.
Once time has
passed we can never get it back. It's gone forever. Time is an equally
shared resource. We all have 24 hours every day and seven days every
week. It doesn't matter how wealthy you are, you can't buy more time.
You can't hoard
time, you can't borrow time,
and... you can't change it in any way. The only thing that you
can do with time is make the best use of it that you can possibly
achieve.
The speed of time
If you think about
your friends and relatives, they all would experience time in different
ways. Time seems to move slowly when you are bored, unoccupied, or
particularly impatient for something to happen. Consider the length of a
minute when you are waiting for the kettle to boil, or a traffic light
to turn green or for someone in your house to answer the ringing
telephone. Time seems to move faster when you are busy, interested and
having a “good time”.
Time also seems to
accelerate. I took a two week holiday recently and found that the second
week went faster than the first. You have probably found the same thing.
When you start to unwind and enjoy the holiday you find that all of
sudden someone seems to be tampering with the clocks to speed them up. I
have heard people talk about the same thing in regard to life. Within a
lifetime the second half goes quicker than the first. It has something
to do with perspective. When I was at school a year seemed like a very
long time. It seemed to take forever to get to the first term holidays,
it took even longer to get to the second term holidays, and to get to
the end of year holidays you would just forget about for you were
certain it would never come.
Whereas now I am
working, a year seems much faster. You have one birthday celebration and
before you know it you seem to be having your next one.
I'm sure if you
think about it would have similar experiences. So time is indeed as the
well known historical American figure Benjamin Franklin stated:
"the stuff of
which life is made".
The best use of
time
With this resource
being consumed at a seemingly accelerating pace even as you read this
article, are you making the best use of it?
From ancient
times, right through to the present day, man has been conscious of time
- we either have a lifetime before us or we all are at the twelfth hour.
So we must ask ourselves "What can we do best with the time we have?".
We are constantly
having to decide what we shall do next. We can spend our time doing
things for our self which at the end of day only gives us short-term
satisfaction. Or we can spend our time doing things for God which will
give us enormous long-term satisfaction. God, as our creator, left us to
find out what His wish is, and to choose our own course according to our
knowledge and understanding of His commands. It is essential for us to
remember that the Lord God knows every act, every word and every
thought. We have to keep in mind that every word, deed and thought which
is contrary to God's holy law is futile.
We can, if we do
not keep careful watch on ourselves, use up so much of our time on
activities that are not helpful in living a life according to God’s
wishes. These are activities that will hinder our progress in the work
God has given us to perform.
Our God who
controls our lives does not expect His servant to do more than they are
able. He knows our weaknesses, but He also does expect that all who are
in his service to use all the opportunities He has given them in His
glory. We must act now to take those opportunities available to us, for
time is always passing quickly. This is what one writer said in the
Bible about time:
How long, Lord? Will you hide Yourself forever?
Will Your wrath burn like fire? Remember how short my time is; For what
futility have you created all the children of men? What man can live and
not see death? Can he deliver his life from the power of the grave?1
We see here the
writer pleading for God to return to the Israelites, for the writer
argues that life is so short it does not allow for God to delay a long
time.
So men who live
over 3000 years ago experienced the same time pressures that we feel
now. They find that their life flies by.
Moses saw life in
a similar way. This is what he said:
For all our days
have passed away in Your wrath; We finish our years like a sigh. The
days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength they
are eighty years, Yet their boast is only labour and sorrow; For it is
soon cut off, and we fly away. 2
The people of
Israel (who Moses led) had done wrong and God was angry with them. Moses
is saying in the quote that life is to short for the entire time to be
taken with God being wrathful towards them. Moses pleads for God to put
away His wrath quickly before the people's 70 year life span is gone.
Moses didn't want to see the opportunity of the people contacting God
disappear as there lives passed before their eyes. Moses realised how
quickly time does go. He knew how fast three score and ten years goes.
He begged God to repent of his wrath against the nation of Israel before
the people had lived out their full life span.
In a similar way
God begs us to repent of our sins and live lives according to His laws
before we find that our allocated three score and ten years is gone.
Along this general line of argument both the Lord Jesus Christ and James
3 try to preach a very important principle - that principle is that
when we live our lives let us not put off to tomorrow what can be done
today. For we may find that one day there will be no tomorrow.
Procrastination
This problem of
putting things off has been around for a long time. For those
civilisations that lived in the past they used to use the word
PROCRASTINATUS to represent this problem of putting things off. These
days we use a derivation of the original Latin word, we say
"Procrastination". We all seem to procrastinate on certain things in our
life, some however have developed it into a art form, thinking up quite
elaborate excuses as to why they can't do this task today. Some people,
when they are half way through a boring task, that they never have
particularly liked doing, find themselves positively willing someone to
ring their phone or come to the front door so that they have a excuse
not to continue with the uninspiring task.
The bad thing is
that procrastination can become a habit and a way of life effectively
stopping us from achieving those goals that we have set ourselves in
life. We must not put off to tomorrow what can be done today. Have you
been thinking about visiting an old or lonely friend…..for the past five
years. Don't put it off - make arrangements to make your first visit
next weekend. Have you been thinking about reading the Bible and
learning more about God, then do it now! Maybe there is a Bible sitting
on your book shelf, you bought or were given the Bible eight years ago
and have walked past the shelf it sits on roughly three times a day -
that means you have passed that book roughly nine thousand times since
you bought it - isn't it time that you get it done off the shelf brush
off eight years worth of dust and start reading it! It will be one of
the most important things you do in your life, for it will redirect your
life in the best possible direction - towards God.
One of Jesus
followers known as James talks about procrastination. He says:
Come now, you who
say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year
there, buy and sell, and make a profit’. Whereas you do not know what
will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour that
appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
4
The uncertainty of
the future
Our life is in
God's control, we can not presume to make future plans with any
certainty. It would be foolish of us to put off doing something
important until some future date, for that date may never come. Life is
like James says - a vapour that appears for a little time and then
vanishes away. In relation to God, it is too short to put off placing
yourself into the position that may make you acceptable to enter that
kingdom soon to be set up on this earth.
We must always
remember that life is not man's eternal possession. It is a thing that
our God controls. The Lord Jesus Christ illustrates this point very
succinctly in the parable 5 of the rich fool. This is what he said:
Then he told them
this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He
thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my
crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns
and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.
And I’ll say to myself ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many
years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ And God said to hum,
‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who
will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
This is how it
will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich
toward God”. 6
This man was a man
making self-satisfied plans not only for the immediate future but also
for a long comfortable retirement, and then all of a sudden at once a
fatal command:
"This very night
your life will be demanded from you”
The man in this
parable thought that the stowing away of material possessions for the
future was essential to his life, but Jesus says that a man's life does
not consist in wealth. A man is what he is, not what he has. This is
what Jesus said:
Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of
greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his
possessions. 7
True wealth is
tied to the relationship you have with God. You will truly live a
fulfilled life if you know God. For it is with him that the true
treasure will be found.
So we need to not
waste what short time God has given each one of us by amassing wealth.
Rather let's use this time to amass a knowledge of the what God wants.
For after all, when a man is stripped of all the worldly wealth so that
he only possesses what he had when he was born, will he be poor or rich?
A day of judgment is coming where God will reveal the real poverty or
wealth of a man.
In each one of our
lives, time is moving quickly past so let us not waste our lives away
worrying overly about the cares of this world but rather let us use the
short time we have to make ourselves ready for the return of Christ.
Don't let us fall into the trap of putting off to tomorrow what can be
done today.
This is what one
wise man in the Bible said:
Do not boast
about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth.
8
The words of this
wise man has application to us if we should plan ahead with the thinking
that we are not quite ready for Christ right now, but that's okay for we
have plenty of time left to prepare ourselves. If we think this way it
could be a grave mistake, for as the words says we do not know what
tomorrow will bring. And even if we continue to live our mortal
existence tomorrow we will find that our set time on this earth will go
very quickly indeed leaving us little time to prepare for the return of
Christ.
Conclusion
In part 2 of this
article we will conclude our look at time and how we can use this scarce
resource effectively.
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