Time Keeps on Slipping

“Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” ~Psalm 90:12

Time keeps on slipping into the future. Isn’t that true? Some of you have experienced a harsh blast of cold air recently, which has reminded you of the frail nature of life and the fleeting number of your days. The death of a friend or loved one, a medical scare, a close call on the road… these can have the beneficial effect of teaching us a much-needed lesson: our days are short and our use of them is not unimportant. How are you using your days, Christian? 

Most of us tend to occupy the space between two poles when it comes to time: managing every second to accomplish all we can in a 24-hour period, or frittering away the hours by scrolling on our phones or binging some TV show. Sometimes we do both in the same day! But Scripture guides us to a better way: learning to number our days so we might exercise wisdom in our use of them (Psa. 90:12; Eph. 5:16). We see this perfectly practiced by Jesus in His estate of humiliation.

The life of Jesus is such a helpful corrective to much of our struggle with the use of time. Have you noticed in the Gospels that we find Jesus doing one of two things? He is either actively administering the grace of God to people (teaching, healing, feeding, etc.), or He is simply enjoying life in God’s creation (walking, taking time away to rest, eating a meal, praying). Jesus perfectly uses each moment with either labor or leisure, and both are intentionally oriented to the glory of God and the good of His neighbor. It’s not that He is always working, His life burdened with task after task — God the Father is not an overbearing manager! Nor is He always resting under a shade tree, as if there were nothing to do in God’s plan for His days. He does both — and perfectly — because He knows His days are numbered, and each of them is given by God for the purpose for which He was sent: to glorify the Father (John 17:4) and to call in His lost sheep (John 17:6). 

Would that each of us might wake up every day asking the Lord to make known to us our end (Psa. 39:4), that we might use our time here on earth with His glory chiefly in view (1 Cor. 10:31). I doubt we would waste our time endlessly watching YouTube shorts if we thought more about our neighbor who doesn’t yet know the love and redemption offered by Christ. I expect we would spend less time slavishly laboring on projects that have little eternal significance if we realized that God also expects us to enjoy rest and recreation. But thanks be to God that Jesus, who never squandered a single moment, has borne the guilt for all of our squandered moments. Friends, the biblical expectation is neither laziness nor overwork, but glorifying God in our leisure and our labor, just as our Savior did.

‘Tis not for man to trifle. Life is brief,
And sin is here;
Our age is but the falling of a leaf, 
A dropping tear.
We have not time to sport away the hours—
All must be earnest in a world like ours.

Not many lives, but only one have we—
One—only one;
How sacred should that one life ever be—
That narrow span!
Day after day, filled up with blessed toil;
Hour after hour, still bringing in new spoil.
— Robert Macdonald 

Rev. Kyle Lockhart, Pastor