168

168 hours from now a week will have passed.  For most of us the single largest chunk of that time, about 56 hours, will be spent in our bed, sleeping.  Another  50 will be given to our work and commute- more for some, less for others.  What about the rest? Where does it go? Do you know?

We ‘spend’ our time very much like we spend our money. Some of us are careful budgeters, thoughtfully allotting hours to exercise, worship, community service, and personal enrichment. Others are profligate – throwing hour after hour away, having no real idea where their time goes, even though it is an irrecoverable asset; our most valuable resource. Some invest the hours of each day looking for maximum return, others let days, weeks, months, even years slip by with no gain.

On Friday, Bev pulled a red leather folder from a box in our attic. It is stamped with the name of an elementary school and inside is a neatly printed diploma and a folded typewritten sheet.  That diploma marked my 8^th grade graduation in June, 1969; the paper holds the text of a little address I made that night at Spruce Run  School.  In a matter of seconds I can run through the intervening years; schools, friends, marriage, babies, churches, deaths. If I pause, I can remember moments of achievement and failure, joy and sorrow.  At age 56, there is a lot more ‘past’ in my life than future.  However, I am not spending a whole lot of time with celebration or regret! Instead, I am focused on the next 168 hours, this week, that are now at hand. “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,  I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)

God asks us to ‘make the most of every opportunity!’ (Col. 4:5)  Killing time is a sin, really! A day of recreation and rest is not the same as a day wasted.  Nor is a day packed with activities that look like ‘work’ necessarily one well spent.  The difference is in the investment, the why and how, of spending each hour.  There are 168 shiny new ones coming our way. What are we going to do with them?

Here’s a word from the Word.  Ponder it and then go live fully. " There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-6, NIV)  "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV)