If I Could Put Time In A Bottle

There are moments in life when time feels generous. Days seem long. Weeks stretch out ahead of us. The future feels wide and open, almost indulgent. And then there are other moments when time suddenly feels thin — compressed, hurried, and slippery. One season we are wondering how to fill the hours, and the next we are asking where they all went.

We live with time constantly, yet we rarely stop to think about it deeply. We organize our lives around it. We measure success by it. We feel pressured by it. We complain about not having enough of it. And still, for something that governs nearly every aspect of our lives, time remains strangely untouchable. You cannot hold it. You cannot store it. You cannot slow it down by effort or intention. You cannot borrow tomorrow’s time, and you cannot reclaim yesterday’s.

You can only spend it.

Every single morning, whether we acknowledge it or not, a deposit is made into our lives. Not money. Not energy. Time. Exactly eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds. No more. No less. That is the allotment for every human being on the planet. And we are free — entirely free — to use those seconds however we choose. There are no restrictions placed on how they must be spent. But there is one unyielding condition: whatever is not used by the end of the day is gone forever. No rollover. No carryover. No credit extended into tomorrow.

That is not a clever illustration. That is reality.

Time is the great equalizer. It does not respect wealth, education, influence, or status. Presidents do not receive longer days than prisoners. Billionaires do not get bonus minutes. The young are not issued extra hours, and the elderly are not penalized with shorter ones. We all wake up to the same twenty-four hours. Time levels us all.

And that leveling is unsettling.

Because deep down, many of us live as though we have more time than we actually do. We assume there will be another chance, another season, another opportunity to say what needs to be said or do what needs to be done. We live as if time were renewable, when in fact it is not. We spend it casually, impulsively, sometimes recklessly — and only later do we realize what it cost us.

That is why the book of Ecclesiastes feels so uncomfortably honest. It does not flatter us. It does not offer sentimental reassurance. It does not pretend that life is fair or predictable. Ecclesiastes is Scripture written from the far side of experience. It is the voice of someone who has lived long enough to see ambition fulfilled and still feel the ache of unanswered questions.

Solomon is not writing as a young man dreaming about the future. He is writing as someone who has accumulated wisdom the hard way — through success, failure, pleasure, disappointment, and loss. He has tasted what many of us chase, and then stepped back to ask the most serious question a human being can ask:

What does it all mean?

Ecclesiastes chapter 3 is one of the most quoted passages in all of Scripture, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. We often hear it read at weddings and funerals, celebrations and memorials — “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” — and we nod along as though it were simply poetic comfort. But Solomon is doing something far more demanding than offering comfort. He is forcing us to reckon with time itself.

In this chapter, Solomon identifies four realities that shape every human life, whether we acknowledge them or not. First, there is something above us — a God who stands over time and orders it according to His purposes. Second, there is something within us — a sense of eternity placed in the human heart, a longing for meaning that time alone cannot satisfy. Third, there is something ahead of us — the certainty of death, the undeniable end of our personal timeline. And finally, there is something around us — the burdens, injustices, and sufferings that press in on life from every side.

God uses all four.

Time.

Eternity.

Death.

Suffering.

Not to torment us. Not to mock us. But to keep life from becoming shallow, monotonous, and meaningless.

Ecclesiastes 3 does not promise us control. It offers us perspective. It does not give us answers to every question, but it teaches us how to live wisely within the questions themselves. It reminds us that while time may feel chaotic from our vantage point, it is not random from God’s.

Time has already begun for you and for me.

It is moving, whether we acknowledge it or not.

And one day, it will end.

The question is not whether time will shape us — it already is.