Day 48 - Issue 26
Exodus 20:9-10 NLT
“You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you.”
There are 168 hours in every week. A friend of ours recently celebrated their 60th birthday; we calculated and then communicated that they had lived a total of 720 months, 3,120 weeks or 21,840 days. When I saw those numbers, I couldn’t help wondering how I’d managed to fill so many hours in my own life. It was a stark reminder of just how quickly time accumulates and then disappears in the wake of my life. If I calculate working seven hours a day for five days, and sleeping eight hours a night for seven days, that still leaves me 77 hours each week.
In our age of stress and anxiety, where most people have to work hard to keep their heads above the economic waterline, it’s worth considering God’s command to take time to rest. Traditionally this was the Sabbath, or in our culture, Sunday. However, if you’re involved in a lively church, it may well be that Sunday is one of your busiest days, and not a day of rest. On the figures quoted above, none of us can claim we lack time. We just don’t know where time’s gone.
My initial approach in my search for my own lost time was to consider how to delete things from my life. I soon found this was unproductive so I changed tack. So now I consider: what sort of life do I want to choose to live? Once I’ve settled on that, finding, or rather [itals]making[end itals], time became so much easier. For me it meant setting down my priorities in exploring life as a contemplative. Here I discovered the wisdom in recognising the power of small moments. Reclaiming an hour was a challenge, and it was always full of distractions, yet finding five minutes, not so hard.
QUESTION: What do you want to give your hours to?
PRAYER: Lord, help me to use the time that you have given me, wisely and joyfully.
