No empty time
We live our lives beneath your wrath. We end our lives with a groan.
Seventy years are given to us! Some may even reach eighty. But even the best of these years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we are gone. … Teach us to make the most of our time, so that we may grow in wisdom.
Aportion of Scripture that guides me constantly is 2 Peter 3:8, where Peter says, "A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day." I believe that every moment is an opportunity to be seized. Each day is as a thousand years; our twenty-four-hour slice of time is a sunrise-to-sunset opportunity for us to do something, by the grace of God, that counts for eternity. Everything we do here has a direct bearing on what's going to happen there. When I think about it, it makes me not want to waste my moments but to redeem the time, to seize the opportunity. A French mystic of the seventeenth century said that God does not give us time in which to do nothing. There is no such thing as empty time. Now, certainly there must be times of rest and respite in which you go before the Lord in solitude. But even our meditation has a beautiful purpose, a sweet repose in which those moments of rest benefit the soul and end up glorifying God. This perspective makes even our suffering purposeful. It doesn't mean we're any less busy—it may mean we're more busy. But the load is lightened knowing that this translates out to eternity—in our life, in another's life, and for the glory of God. Joni Eareckson Tada ReflectionDo I have the right kind of busyness in my life? PrayerLord, help me to employ my time for you, not in frantic busyness, as if I had something to prove to you, but in calm thankfulness for all you've given me, including the gift of time. "I have this minute in my control. It is all I really do have to work with. It is as magnificent or drab or vile as the thoughts which fill it. I fear our most common sin is empty minutes." —Frank Laubach, late missionary and author  share this page |             |
