If there is one thing everyone can agree on today, it is that there is not enough time in our life.
The Bible teaches us this principle in the Psalms:
Lord, let me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.
You have made my days a few handbreadths, (the length of an open hand)
and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight.
Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. (Psalm 29:4-13)
Whether we are young or old, rich or poor, we all understand, and we have experienced, the speed with which time is passing us by – that is if we can stop long enough to consider it.
For busy workers or parents, it seems as though there is never enough time to get everything done. If we happen to be past the working phase of our life, and maybe even have already raised our children, we are well aware of how quickly those years passed us by.
In addition to these day-to-day realities of life, we are also aware of the shortness of this temporal and temporary life when it is placed in comparison to eternal life.
The days of our life are seventy years
or perhaps eighty, if we are strong. (Psalm 90:10)
A theologian once asked his audience to ponder their future one million years into eternity. He encouraged them to consider whether they would recall or care about the time spent on earth.
Of course, it is not actually a fair comparison. This temporal order we call life is measured in hours, days, months and years. But in eternity, there will be no such thing as time. There will be no night. We will live in perpetual light, and there will be no such thing as the passing of time.
And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Revelations 22:5)
As encouraging as this is, it still leaves us with the reality that, in our all-too-brief earthly life, we do not have enough time. If we recognize this, the question that should arise in our hearts is: just how should we be spending the majority of this very limited time?
In the advertisements we are all bombarded with every day, it seems the world emphasizes our need to focus on getting all we can out of this life. Seek your pleasure now before time runs out.
But the Epistle of James teaches us about how we might use our remaining time more wisely:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15)
The Bible makes clear the best source of guidance for how we should spend our time is God.
So, what might God provide us by way of direction?
The Gospel of Matthew offers a well-known verse that can help us understand the emphasis God suggests we place on this life verses our preparation for eternal life.
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
We might think about it this way, if we truly desired to develop a skill, say playing a musical instrument, or we desperately wanted to transform our bodies, either by losing weight or gaining muscle, how much time would we be willing to commit to see our dreams come true?
The same is true for our desire to prepare ourselves to enter eternal life. We must each be transformed if we wish to be ready to enter eternal life. And we are currently in a position to store up our future treasure by how we choose to spend our time. But it won’t last forever.
Let us pray this week that we might all place our hearts where our true treasure is, and that we will use what limited time we have left to store up treasures where we will be spending eternity.
Copyright © 2024, Deacon Mark Danis
Image credit:"Resurrezione di Lazzaro (Raising of Lazarus)," Giotto di Bondone, Public domain, via WikiArt