Are we throwing away our time?

‘I only have a minute. Only sixty seconds in it. … Just a tiny little minute. But eternity is in it.’ Those words by Pastor Benjamin Mays remind us again of just how precious the God-given gift of time is. Life is made of moments and none of us have an infinite supply.

The Bible has many metaphors that illustrate just how brief and temporary our existence is here on earth. It’s described as a breath, a flower that fades, and a wisp of smoke that appears for a little while. It’s a sobering thought that should you reach 80 years of age, you will have lived for around just 4,000 weeks. Life, we often learn too late, is in the living. Most people leave this world with a few pounds in the bank, but all of us leave it with no seconds on the clock. Time, therefore, is infinitely more important than money. Once it’s gone, all the gold in the universe can’t buy back a single moment.

And yet how recklessly we treat it. We throw away our days much like the Prodigal Son did his inheritance. The Roman philosopher Seneca said we live as if we are destined to live forever, squandering time as if we drew from a full and abundant supply, not noticing how little of it each of us has. So poorly do we value this gift that we even speak of ‘killing time’ when we’re bored. The reality is, however, that time is killing us.

The certainty of life’s brevity permeates the Bible from cover to cover, but perhaps there is no verse that better encapsulates the message than Psalm 90:12: ‘So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.’ Essentially, David is saying we all have a certain number of days to harness, but we waste so much of it on the minutiae of life. We need to learn to be wise in how we spend our time.

If that was true in Biblical times it’s most certainly true today. We live in a world that continually battles against online distraction. We waste so much of our time managing a tsunami of emails, texts and tweets that keep us continually checking our phones. Dr Caroline Leaf said: ‘We have been reduced to 140 characters and an addiction to looking for the next informational high.’ We become absorbed with trivialities, while neglecting the truly important things in life. And all the while the clock is ticking.

Teach us

David’s first words ‘teach us’ suggests that every generation needs to learn the lesson of just how transient life is. This is surprising since it would seem that our mortality is glaringly obvious. Yet the vast majority live in a state of permanent blissful ignorance as to its fragility. With this in mind he writes ‘teach us to number our days’. Don’t be a fool, don’t waste your days.

That’s why Paul writes: ‘See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time’ (Eph. 5:15-16).To redeem something means to regain possession of it. God wants us to live with an awareness of that ticking clock and make the most of the opportunities we have. The Romans had a phrase ‘Carpe diem’ – ‘Seize the day’.

Believers must be aware too that we are accountable to God for how we use the time He has gifted us. At All Souls College, Oxford, there is a Christopher Wren-designed sundial carrying an inscription reading ‘Pereunt et imputantur’ – ‘The hours perish and are laid to our charge’. It’s a powerful statement. Time is not our own property. Our days are God’s gift to us to do the work He wants us to do.

There are, of course, legitimate commitments in all our lives, such as worship, friendship, work, recreation and rest, but those countless hours and days we waste is one of the greatest tragedies we can do to ourselves. As one commentator said: ‘Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by day, in all the small casual moments.’

Number our days

Notice here the David’s unit of computation. He doesn’t speak of years, months, or even weeks, but of days – ‘teach us to number our days’. Each new day bring us 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, but they fly past with a rapidity that is frightening. We squander them with the mistaken belief there will always be more to come, almost treating them with disdain. A day lost, a day wasted, causes no real regret.

But in Luke chapter 12, Jesus tells us what happens when we don’t ‘number our days’, describing a rich man who only wanted to ‘eat, drink and be merry’. He had no thought for God or eternal things, thinking he had many years left. But God said to him: ‘You fool, this very night, your soul will be required of you.’ Had he learned to ‘number his days’, he would have lived very differently and not wasted them on things of little value.

Now of course if this world were the only world and this life the only life, then it might be wise for man to devote himself totally to the things that belong to the here and now. But man is more than an inhabitant of this world, he is a spiritual creature with an eternal destiny, and his time on this planet is very limited.

A story that is sometimes told is about a man who opens a newspaper and discovers that the date on the paper is six months in advance of the time in which he lives. He reads through the paper and discovers stories about events that have not yet taken place. He gets excited when he comes to the financial page and looks at the rise and fall of various stocks and shares. This information, he knows, will make him very wealthy. But then, on the next page, he comes across the obituary column and is horrified to see his name. Suddenly everything changes. The knowledge of his impending demise immediately changes his views on what is truly important and snaps everything into a very different perspective.

Wisdom

That is what David means when he asks for wisdom. How do we acquire this wisdom? Paul tells us in Colossians 3:16: ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly … in all wisdom.’ The ultimate source of wisdom is God’s word. Proverbs 2:6 tells us: ‘For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.’

By soaking ourselves in the Scripture we become aware of God’s wisdom. His thoughts become our thoughts. We become more detached from the trivial and the temporal, but closer to those things that are unseen and eternal. In this context we are to view life, as it were, from God’s frame of reference. Instead of killing time, redeem it; instead of counting days, make your days count. As Henry Ironside said: ‘Time is given us to use in view of eternity.’ The supreme goal of life is not to see how long we can breathe, but to form a character for all eternity.

The wisdom that David prays for is to view life through God’s eternal lens and manage our time in a way that brings glory to Him.