Time
A Life Once Spent Is Irrevocable
A life once spent is irrevocable. It will remain to be contemplated through eternity….The same may be said of each day. When it is once past, it is gone forever. All the marks which we put upon it, it will exhibit forever….Each day will not only be a witness of our conduct, but will affect our everlasting destiny….How shall we then wish to see each day marked with usefulness…! It is too late to mend the days that are past. The future is in our power. Let us, then, each morning, resolve to send the day into eternity in such a garb as we shall wish it to wear forever. And at night let us reflect that one more day is irrevocably gone, indelibly marked.
Adoniram Judson, in E. Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson (Anson, Randolph & Company, 1883), pp. 13-15
Bank Named TIME
Imagine that a bank credits your account each morning with $86,400. No balance is carried over from day to day. Any balance is deleted each evening. What would you do when you knew that you would not use all your daily balance? Why, withdraw every farthing, of course!!!!!!
You have such a bank and so have I. The name of our bank is TIME. Every day we are credited with 86,400 seconds. Every night, that which we have not used is debited from our account. TIME bank allows no overdraft, there is no going back for a second chance. TIME bank does not allow borrowing from tomorrow and of course, and there are no leftovers. The clock ticks away, never waiting for sluggards to catch up, no waiting, for what might have been, relentlessly the clock ticks and ticks.
We must invest our treasure wisely so that we obtain the best return in health, success, happiness, giving freely to those in need of God’s love, the warmth of Jesus arms, the teaching of our taskmaster, The HOLY SPIRIT.
Source Unknown
How Do We Value Time?
• How do we value ONE YEAR? Ask a student who failed a grade.
• How do we value ONE MONTH? Ask a Mother whose baby arrived prematurely.
• How do we value ONE WEEK? Editor’s of weekly newspapers know.
• How do we value ONE HOUR? Ask someone who lies terminally ill waiting for a loved one who is late.
• How do we value ONE MINUTE? Ask someone who missed a plane, a train, a very important engagement that would never be rescheduled.
• How do we value ONE SECOND? Ask and Olympic Medalist, someone who just missed having an accident, or someone saying good by to a loved one they will never see again.
Source Unknown
The Bank
• Our Banker is God the Father.
• Bank President is Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Savior and Lord.
• Accountant and Teller is the Holy Spirit who, deeply concerned about our spending, lives within us as our guide and mentor.
Source Unknown
The Big Rocks of Life
A while back I was reading about an expert on the subject of time management. One day this expert was speaking to a group of business students and to drive home a point, used an illustration I’m sure those students will never forget. After I share it with you, you’ll never forget it either.
As this man stood in front of the group of high-powered overachievers, he said, “Okay, time for a quiz.” Then he pulled out a one-gallon, wide mouthed Mason jar and set it on a table in front of him. Then he produced about a dozen fist-sized rocks and carefully placed them, one at a time, into the jar. When the jar was filled to the top and no more rocks would fit inside, he asked, “Is this jar full?” Everyone in the class said, “Yes.”
Then he said, “Really?” He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar causing pieces of gravel to work themselves down into the spaces between the big rocks.
Then he smiled and asked the group once more, “Is the jar full?” By this time the class was on to him. “Probably not,” one of them said.
“Good!” he replied. And he reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it went into all the spaces left between the rocks and the gravel. Once more he asked the question, “Is this jar full?” “No!” the class shouted. Once again he said, “Good!” Then he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in until the jar was filled to the brim.
Then he looked up at the class and asked, “What is the point of this illustration?”
One eager beaver raised his hand and said, “The point is, no matter how full your schedule is, if you try really hard, you can always fit some more things into it!”
“No,” the speaker replied, “that’s not the point. The truth this illustration teaches us is: If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all.”
What are the big rocks of your life?
To commune with the Father when you awake.
To spend time reading His Word that we may observe to do all that is written in it.
To give and surrender ourselves daily to the Lord as our reasonable service.
Acknowledging Him in all of our ways and refusing to lean to our own strength and understanding, this guarantees is that He will make plain our paths.
Remember to put these BIG ROCKS in first or you’ll never get them in at all.
Source Unknown
Time for Life
According to the authors of a controversial new book entitled Time for Life, the average American has more free time today than at any time since 1965. Two time management experts studied the daily routines of Americans over the past thirty years to reach their surprising conclusion, which says that our leisure time has increased almost five hours per week in the last three decades. Knowing that most people feel more rushed today than ever before, the authors say more leisure time has actually accelerated rather than slowed the pace of life….
On an average, Americans spend nine-tenths of one hour per week, about fifty-four minutes, on religious activities. Compare this to fifteen hours a week that are spent watching television.
Today in the Word, November 16, 1997
Time of the Mad Atom
This is the age Of the half-read page. And the quick hash And the mad dash.
The bright night With the nerves tight. The plane hop With the brief stop.
The lamp tan In a short span. The Big Shot In a good spot.
And the brain strain The heart pain. And the cat naps Till the spring snaps —
And the fun’s done!
(Reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, 1949, The Curtis Publishing Co.), Courage – You Can Stand Strong in the Face of Fear, Jon Johnston, 1990, SP Publications, p. 143
Raw Material
Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it.
You wake up in the morning, and lo! Your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions… No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness—the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends—depends on that.
If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely.
We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.
Arnold Bennett, Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, pp. 18-20
No Time to Play
My precious boy with the golden hair Came up one day beside my chair And fell upon his bended knee And said, “Oh, Mommy, please play with me!”
I said, “Not now, go on and play; I’ve got so much to do today.” He smiled through tears in eyes so blue When I said, “We’ll play when I get through.”
But the chores lasted all through the day And I never did find time to play. When supper was over and dishes done, I was much too tired for my little son.
I tucked him in and kissed his cheek And watched my angel fall asleep. As I tossed and turned upon my bed, Those words kept ringing in my head,
“Not now, son, go on and play, I’ve got so much to do today.” I fell asleep and in a minute’s span, My little boy is a full-grown man.
No toys are there to clutter the floor; No dirty fingerprints on the door; No snacks to fix; no tears to dry; The rooms just echo my lonely sigh.
And now I’ve got the time to play; But my precious boy is gone away. I awoke myself with a pitiful scream And realized it was just a dream
For across the room in his little bed, Lay my curly-haired boy, the sleepy-head. My work will wait ‘til another day For now I must find some time to play.
Dianna (Ars. Joe) Neal
I Can’t Afford to Waste My Time Making Money
The great 19th-century naturalist and Harvard professor Louis Agassiz was once approached by the emissary of a learned society and invited to address its members. Agassiz declined the invitation, saying that lectures of this kind took up too much time that should be devoted to research and writing. The man persisted, saying that the society was prepared to pay handsomely for the lecture.
“That’s no inducement to me,” Agassiz replied, “I can’t afford to waste my time making money.”
Today in the Word, June 4, 1992
Quotes
• As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. – Henry David Thoreau
• Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of. – Benjamin Franklin
• I have so much to do today that I shall spend the first 3 hours in prayer. – Martin Luther
• Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. – Carl Sandburg
• What if you were given $1440.00 at the start of each day to use as you see fit, the only stipulation being that you must give back what you haven’t spent by the end of the day?
• Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
• We master our minutes, or we become slaves to them; we use time, or time uses us.
• More time is wasted not in hours but in minutes. A bucket with a small hole in the bottom gets just as empty as a bucket that is deliberately kicked over.
• Treasure each second that you have, and all the more when you can share your precious treasure with someone special, someone to share your treasure! Remember that relentless clock that waits for no one for any reason!
• Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present!
• We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end. – Seneca
• Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. – Susan Ertz
List Time Wasters
Common advice given to people who want to improve their use of time is to focus on what contributes most. The inverse, however, is also a worthy pursuit. What does not contribute but only wastes time? Try listing all the “time wasters” in a typical week and then rank them on the basis of their degree of time misuse. Ask questions: “What would happen if I didn’t do this? Would it make a significant difference? Can I delegate this?”
Bits and Pieces, May 1990, p. 18
Your Time With Children
Parents rate their inability to spend enough time with their children as the greatest threat to the family. In a survey conducted for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Corp., 35 percent pointed to time constraints as the most important reason for the decline in family values. Another 22 percent mentioned a lack of parental discipline. While 63 percent listed family as their greatest source of pleasure, only 44 percent described the quality of family life in America as good or excellent. And only 34 percent expected it to be good or excellent by 1999. Despite their expressed desire for more family time, two-thirds of those surveyed say they would probably accept a job that required more time away from home if it offered higher income or greater prestige.
Moody Monthly, December, 1989, p. 72
Resource
• C. Swindoll, Make Up Your Mind, p. 51
What Happened to
• When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept.
• When as a youth I dreamed and talked, time walked.
• When I became a full grown man, time ran.
• And later as I older grew, time flew.
• Soon I shall find while traveling on, time gone.
Source Unknown
Tithe
How often have you talked with someone on the telephone who seemed to be in a hurry and wanted to get on with more important business? Or visited with someone on the street and received that same hurried feeling?
You’ve undoubtedly experienced it…and didn’t enjoy it. And, perhaps, you have also been guilty of this.
If you have, why not decide to tithe time, save up chunks, bits and pieces of it, and give them away to people who interrupt your pre-established plans?
It is a great principle of love that people don’t interrupt, not really. Perhaps there shouldn’t even be such a word as interrupt; for when people come into your existence, even for a brief time, that is a wonderful moment of experience for both of you. Relish it. Probe it. Invest some of the time you have tithed. We can’t afford to indulge in the luxury of “being too busy and important” for another person.
We have time for such inanimate things as pieces of mail, vast sprawling shopping centers, the television program which starts at 7:30. But what about relationships with people? Isn’t that a great deal of what life is all about—loving other people?
Remember Jesus? How he raced about, hurrying from one city to another, collecting great crowds on the way to give them a few minutes of hurried heaven-data, then dashing on to the next place?
No, that is not the picture of Jesus the New Testament gives. He had time for people. In a crowd, a woman touched his robe. Lots of people were probably pushing against him, touching his robe, but he discerned the urgency in this particular touch. He stopped, taking valuable time for this “interruption.”
His disciples were full of fire and computer-like-efficiency. They wanted to get on with the task of getting something done, even if they didn’t always know what that “something” was. Once a bunch of small, grimy-fingered kids came along and wanted to climb on the Master’s lap.
“Get those kids out of here,” thought the goal-oriented disciples.
“No, let them stay. Let’s enjoy them and let them enjoy us,” thought the true-goal-oriented Man from heaven who knew and expressed the great worth of the individual.
The next time a person “interrupts” you, think not of your work and your deadlines; rather, think of that person’s needs, of his covert compliment in desiring to spend a few moments with you.
Your meeting may be a significant point in each of your lives, because it is an encounter with another person God has created. you may impart something crucial to his fulfillment—or he to yours.
Paul prayed: “May God, who gives patience, steadiness, and encouragement, help you to live in complete harmony with each other—each with the attitude of Christ toward the other” (Rom. 15:5, TLB). Are you caught up on your time-tithe?
Monte Unger, in January, 1975 NAVLOG
The Average American Will Spend…
• Six months siting at stoplights
• Eight months opening junk mail
• One year looking for misplaced objects
• 2 years unsuccessfully returning phone calls
• 4 years doing housework
• 5 years waiting in line
• 6 years eating
(survey of 6000 people polled in 1988, U.S. News and World Report, Jan. 30, 1989, p. 81)