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"Now listen to me you that say, 'Today or tomorrow
you will travel to a certain city, where we stay a year
and go into business and make a lot of money.' You don't
even know what your life tomorrow will be. You are like
a puff of smoke which appears for a moment and then disappears."
James 4:13,14.
James reminds us that time is fleeting, life is short, and
we can not know what lies ahead of us. Indeed, every anniversary
tells us "time flies". When we pass from teenage
time seems to take legs to run at breakneck speed. That should
mean we are always time conscious.
"If you live life then do not squander time for that
is the stuff life is made of." Benjamin Franklin.
Wasted time shortens life, reduces the number of opportunities
to enlarge it. The wisest are the most annoyed at the loss
of time.
We should use our time to the best advantage, for nothing
of consequence can be attained without commitment, and that
has with it a sense of time. But like many another rule of
life this one is often ignored. Most of us are extravagant
in our spending of time. It is what we want most and use worst.
The greatest loss of time is from delay and expectation which
depends upon the future. We let go of the present and look
forward to that which depends upon chance, and certainty becomes
uncertainty.
God who is liberal in all His other gifts shows us by the
wise economy of His providence, how careful we should be in
the management of our time, for He never gives us two moments
together.
We have our own time and often we are robbed of it. If someone
borrows money he has to have security to cover the loan and
he pays interest for it, but if he takes away our time it
is often without apology and as though he owes us nothing
for it. Few of us have not been the victim of someone who
wasted our time. Our time is regulated, of course, necessarily
by circumstances. Working and sleeping times are set by employment,
commitments to home and family, and personal needs. Our "free"
times are ours to be used as we will and we use them well
or ill.
The first call on our time should be to worship God, to use
it to lift us from the secular and selfish to thank Him who
gives us freely of His magnificence and for the sense that
we live and move in His company. On the first day of the week
we are called to the public worship of God in the House of
God. The principle laid down in this is meant to be the pattern
for our private devotion in the other days. It is the imperative
for living as Christians wherever we are.
In public worship, the emphases are on prayer and Bible study.
They are the same for private devotions. Prayer is the voice
of faith. Someone put it nicely: "O happy advantage of
a bended knee."
Happy are they who mingle prayer, work and play. To them
prayer is the enabling power of their lives.
"We kneel how weak; we rise how full of power. Why,
therefore should we do ourselves the wrong of others that
we are not always strong; that we are overborne with care;
that we should ever weak or heartless be, anxious or troubled,
when with us is prayer, and joy and strength 'and courage
are with Thee."
Bible study! It is by the Bible that God speaks to us, for
it is His means of conversation with us. In the complexities
and insanities of life in this troubled and turbulent age
we find the Bible to be a mine of information about life's
problems, and it tells us how to deal with them.
Because Christians should be living and witnessing their
faith to a society that needs to hear what God is saying to
it, they must be inspired, encouraged and strengthened for
what life demands of them, by their Bible and what God is
saying to them through it. Life is best when it is grounded
on the worship of God, powered by the Holy Spirit and moulded
by the teachings of the scriptures.
The most effective witness to faith in God is the godly life,
Christ-like in its ability to face confidently what life holds
for the believer. It is the task of the church the people
of God, to help its members to live the godly life. It does
that by its worship, teaching and preaching, the encouragement
of a shared, helpful and meaningful fellowship in mutual sympathy
and understanding. The church builds up the Christian in his
faith. There should be a moment of time when consciously and
deliberately we give ourselves to Christ. That will be the
life changing experience, the most important in our lives.
"Come to the Saviour, make no delay,
Here in His Word He has shown us the way,
Here in our midst, He's standing today,
Tenderly saying, 'Come'."
Rev. Canon Dr. S.E. Long
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