By Russ Atmore
All
of us are familiar with such phrases as; “where has all the time gone”,
“time flies”, “I just don’t have enough time”, “there are not enough
hours in the day”, etc. These all characterize our impatience and
frustration, and are merely an expression of our struggles with time.
Time is the one thing we all deal with every day. This should not
surprise us, since Genesis 1 is full of time. It uses expressions such
as, “and there was evening and there was morning – the first day”. The
text of Scripture speaks of day and night, the sun, the moon and the
stars. The Hebrew word for day, “yom” reflects a genuine 24 hour day
(when linked with an ordinal, eg: first, second, etc), thus we believe
in a literal 6 day creation. The creation account introduces us to time.
As Christians we affirm that God’s creation is perfect, therefore, we
must affirm that time is perfect; namely, 24 hours is just what God
wanted us to have.
It is apparent from the Bible, that God
has thus given us enough time to perform our duties as required by Him.
We acknowledge instinctively that it is necessary to work and to sleep.
Sleep or rest is simply a gracious gift from God, whereby we recover
from the day’s exertions, in order to pursue the following day’s duties.
It is staggering that so few of us enjoy good nights of sleep. We need
sleeping pills to induce sleep, and thus subject our bodies to abusive
agents. The problem with us is that we have changed God’s simple
requirements (daily duties) into something that God never intended for
us. We argue that we have no time, yet so often that excuse is one of
our own making because we simply have not structured our lives
correctly. This is exemplified in the excuses that we offer regarding
Bible reading and study. We exclaim, “ I don’t have time to read my
Bible, let alone study it.”
This is all the more amazing when we
consider that God is in charge of time. He has given us just the right
amount of time, but we complain, “if only I had more time, I would be
able to do this and do that.” The truth is, that if we are unable to do
what God expects from us with the time we currently have, the chances
are strong we will never do what we say we would do. Therefore, the
problem is not with availability of time, but rather with ourselves. If
we took stock of ourselves first of all, we would find that there is
sufficient time to do all that God has asked us to do. It is true that
all of us are different; some require more sleep than others, some can
survive on little sleep and so on. It behooves each Christian to
discover for himself or herself exactly how God has made them, and then
to use that knowledge wisely.
The Bible tells us that “time” is one
thing we all share. Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 is a beautiful passage on time.
There is a time for everything, (vs. 1) and God has made everything
beautiful in its time – he has set eternity in the hearts of men (vs.
11). All of us need to change our thinking. Psalm 31:15 tells us, that
our times are in God’s hands. Our moments belong to God. We need to
dedicate our time to the Lord. Where we find ourselves rushed off our
feet, we need to slow down and spend time with God to regain the right
perspective.
Ephesians 5:16 “…making the most of
every opportunity, because the days are evil.”
There is no time to waste – time is a
precious gift from God. We tend to clutter our lives with superfluous
and unimportant details. We need to reorganize our lives around God.
Perhaps we should get up 20 minutes earlier on a particular day, and
just read the Bible, or write down some important items to pray about.
Time is available to us all; we just need to discover it again, and then
use it for the Lord. I suppose that our modern age has contributed to
our failures with time. If you went back a hundred years or so, there
were no diversions or extracurricular activities to distract one from
important things. If we allow the clutter of life into our lives, we
become cluttered. We become frustrated because it seems as though we
cannot accomplish anything – time marches on, it waits for no man. We
get caught in a vicious cycle. You need to break that cycle decisively.
If we truly believe in our God, then
surely He can help us utilize our lives more effectively for Him. It is
exciting to see what God can do if we yield ourselves to him. The
Christian is required to give God everything – our bodies, our hearts,
our minds, our souls, our all. What you give to God, He returns with
reward. If we honor Him, He will honor us (1 Samuel 2:30). Why not give
God your time, and then see what He does for you.
Listen to the prayer of Moses in Psalm
90:12 “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of
wisdom.”
We should never say that we are running
out of time. We ought to strive to be in God’s time because His time is
always perfect.
|
