Time

GREAT THINGS I DID WITH MY TIME THIS WEEK:

• Read The Buck Stops Here, a great mystery by Mindy Starns Clark
• go hiking in the gorgeous mountains God made with my mom and best friend
• pray for my dearest friends around the world serving God
• bake the best cookie recipe in the world (well...at least the lowest fat best)
• read my Bible
  
• sit at my granddaddy's feet and hear about his day

NOT SO GREAT THINGS I DID WITH MY TIME THIS WEEK:

• get impatient in a conversation with my mom
• wish away my time at work wishing I was at home relaxing
• drive to and from work on auto-pilot, not using that time for something good
• oversleep when I could be rejoicing in God's great day
• stay up late because I didn't use my time during the day to get homework done
• eat lunch at work when I should be working

Have you ever thought about what a precious, precious thing time is? God has given us so much of it...and yet so little.  For instance, it has now been fully a month since I last found the time to write on this blog because of a summer class that lasted through June and seemed to take every second of my time, not to mention family and construction on our house and a friend coming to stay...all three WONDERFUL treasures, and also sharers of my time.  

Of course, this blog is not particularly life or death and no one will suffer greatly for my having missed a month.  In fact, I don't know if anyone would even notice at this early stage of my blogging "career".  But the thing I've realized is that unless you make time for the important things, they disappear.  The blog isn't the only thing that has suffered.  There's also time with my family and dear best friend who is here (!!!!), sleep, and, most importantly, time with God.

The Bible (one of Paul's letters I think?  I can't find the reference right now) says to "redeem the time because the days are evil," (obviously not an exact quote).  These days are evil aren't they?  We face uncertain times in our economy, our government, our world.  There are poor people one every corner, and hurting, spiritually broken people on every single inch of our cities and towns, needing us to reach out to them, and yet I've let my activities the last month snatch all of my time from more important things.  We let our lives rush us from pillar to post stealing our time without stopping to help others.  And so since "redeem" means buy back, let's buy back our time this week, take it back and repurpose it.  I'm doing this by carving out a few minutes to write this post, another worthwhile thing I've done this week since I know that God has called me to write this blog, at least for the summer.  

How can you snatch back some of your time this week?  Ask God what He wants you to do this week and then worship Him by using your time to do that very thing.  

Celebrate the treasure of time and thank God for it by praising Him for it, and then using it well.  It doesn't last very long so we need to value it while it is around.  Go read Isaiah 40 for words on how fleeting our time and space is in comparison to God's eternity.