Time We All Have It
Time In a Bottle; is a hit single from Jim Croce that caught me ear in my childhood in the 1970’s. Not knowing the story behind the song simply seeing life before me as an eternity. In the 70’s I was just starting school, and yet those summer days left me with childhood memories that still bring warm smiles to my heart. Long before girls were of interest to me the opening line proved a model of those good ole days of my childhood; “If I could save time in a bottle the first thing that I like to do is to save every day.” After-all if I was putting butterflies and bugs into a bottle then so why not time?
Life works around time, and so to sound important we schedule our day around time.There is a time to wake up, some much more earlier than others, but still this becomes the start of one’s day. How one schedules their day can reflect that individual’s management of time which reminds me of a conversation I had with a Christian sister some time ago who observed; “We have become a culture of ‘doing people’ we can certainly make ourselves appear busy doing things but are we doing the things that will help us grow and strengthen our relationship with God?” Where you work can consume one third to one half of your day then there is hockey practice, dance recitals, the cat has to go to the vet and the dog is late for obedience training. So while you attempt to figure out how to best manage your time let me share with you the following illustration.
Suppose someone with the financial means offers to put $86,000 in your bank account every day with only one instruction, “You have to spend the entire $86.000 each day, the funds could not be invested nor spent frivolously. You have to show accountability of how you spent the money to improve the life of another. If you were unable to spend the whole amount the remaining funds were lost but another $86,000 – this is not a top up – would be deposited and a new balance of $86,000 would appear the next day.” Would you be up to the task? Well this is what God does every day if you were to calculate how many seconds there are in a day you will discover that there are 86,400 seconds in one day. The unused seconds of yesterday are gone you only have the seconds of this day so how will you spend what God has blessed you with today? In Matthew’s gospel witness of Jesus the writer preserves a question asked by Jesus “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matt. 6:27) The words of Jesus draw you to examine how you walk in each day. Too much dwelling in your past will prevent you from seeing the blessing of this day similarly too much worry in the future might inhibit your responsibility of this day.
Learning from your past that is what the Bible calls wisdom, the Book of Proverbs found in the Old Testament has a lot to say about wisdom. Equally important is to plan for your future that is the hope of what is preserved in God’s promise of salvation. Now should we invest in our future yes even my wife and I have a small retirement investment. The future Jesus warns against is the one that places you living so far in the future that you might miss the blessing of this day. It’s never too late to peak at your bank account and see how much time you still have to spend in this day that God has blessed you with and how your investment of time to read this blog will ready you for the blessing that God will deposit into you day tomorrow.

















