On Matters of Time

Once a minute is passed, it is over and there is no going back. Time travel has probably been one of man’s most coveted after experiences since the inception of the wishful idea. How wonderful would it be if we could go back, turn back the clock, have a do-over, in life? Go back a few years with the knowledge that we now have and have the chance to live differently.

I know I would have if I could have gone back. Sometimes, I get into bed at night and just think to myself, “Oh, if I could only do today over again!” Sometimes, I wish I could go back years and completely re-do whole seasons of time.

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to slow down. I would do everything in my power to just tell myself that I need to pray much more and play much less. It is imperative that I spend many more hours in prayer or in reading the Bible than I spend watching movies, or surfing the internet, or even just bumming around and not doing anything.

We’re not here for our own purposes. We were not given health and life and family and friends and resources and money and time and talents to use all for our own gain! Today in the world, there are literally millions of people who live without hope. Millions of people today in the 21st century still die of disease and malnutrition. The same people would be able to live from the very scrapes from our tables, and yet we waste so much.

There is a judgment coming. There is a God who will judge us for how we lived, what we did, where we spent our money, how we used our energies and our resources. It is wisdom to awaken to the reality that we will one day give an account of all we have done and according to that account – we will either gain or lose.

For whatever reason, out eternal destines are wrapped up in how we spend our years on earth. We can all appreciate the concept – for it is played out on a much smaller scale in our earthly lives. How a youth spends his high school years, determines where he will be in his 20s, either in college or not. How a college student spends their college years determines what kind of job they will get, and what we do in our first jobs in our 20s determines the course of our whole lives.

It is absolutely amazing to me that the way someone spend their years from 15-25 years old basically sets the course of the next 50 years for them. There is a law in place and in action in this example. It is the law of exponential increase. That law states that whatever we do, we will live with the ramifications of those actions for years to come, whether for good or for bad.

For this reason, we must be very careful in how we live our lives. Solomon exhorted his readers to live introspectively, to take an account of their lives and days so that they would not perish. The world is designed to keep us entertained, nay, distracted and busy so that we don’t have time to think. Most of the population on the North American continent spends 60+ hours a week at work. It has become a sort of badge of honor in our own working circles to never be at home and to always be working. People think that if they take a break, they are somehow falling behind – a sort of masochistic approach to a once wholesome work ethic, has led to workaholism on such a scale that there has never been a nation of people in the history of the world who works as much as we. Our British counterparts today take an average two weeks’ vacation a year in comparison to our one.

We work too much and then when we come home, most of us are so tired that we want to do nothing but watch something mind-numbing on TV. And so the age of useless sitcoms and quick witted cartoons for adults has emerged. A kind of parody on shows that had any redeeming qualities then ensued and TV programming began to have more and more shows with less and less of any kind of a point. Most of Americans are too tired to want to watch anything that has a lesson, or teaches on the values of life of the family.

And in the midst of all this, there is no time to pray. Most Americans would claim that they do pray, pray at least once a day and have some sort of acknowledgment that there is a God or at least a higher power. The reality of it is, there is only one God and His Name is Jesus. The only way to get to know Him is to read the Bible, to pray and to walk in life with Christians.

It matters how we spend our time. Sometimes it’s just about being ready for the opportunity. I think that there are many opportunities out there right now; however the only ones who can best capitalize on those opportunities are the ones who are ready. Preparation, by definition means to pre-pare. It is when we prepare ourselves for that which has not yet come to be, but when it does, because of our preparation, we are best able to do whatever needs to be done.

Sometimes it’s just about being faithful and being there. Continuously placing ourselves in the right places and surrounding ourselves with the right people, so that when the right time comes along – we’re there!