Timing Is Everything

Let’s play “Let’s Pretend.”

Let’s pretend that your banker phoned you late last Friday and said he had some very good news. He told you that an anonymous donor who loves you very much had decided to deposit 86,400 pennies into your account each morning, starting the following Monday morning. That’s $864 a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. He adds, “But there’s one stipulation…you must spend all the money that same day. No balance will be carried over to the next day. Each evening the bank must cancel whatever sum you failed to use.” With a big smile, you thank your banker and hang up. Over that weekend you have time to plan. You grab a pencil and start figuring: $864 times seven equals over $6,000 a week…times fifty-two. That’s almost $315,000 a year that you have available to you if you’re diligent to spend it all each day. Remember, whatever you don’t spend is forfeited. So much for “Let’s Pretend.”

Now let’s play “Let’s get Serious.” Every morning Someone who loves you very much deposits into your bank of time 86,400 seconds of time-which represents 1,440 minutes-which, of course, equal twenty-four hours each day.

Now you’ve got to remember the same stipulation applies, because God gives you this amount of time for you to use each day. Nothing is carried over on credit to the next day. There is no such thing as a twenty-six-hour day (though some of us wish there were). From today’s dawn until tomorrow’s dawn, you have a precisely determined amount of time. As someone has put it, “Life is a coin. You can spend it anyway you want to, but you can spend it only once.”

One of the most fascinating (and, I might add, frustrating) of all subjects is this four-letter word TIME. It’s amazing. We all have the same amount of time. Whether we are penniless or whether we happen to be the richest person on earth, whether we are young or old, single or married, employed or without a job, an adolescent in school or the President of the United States of America-we have exactly the same amount of time (page 67).

So the question now surfaces to the top – so what are you going to do with your time? How will you use it? Will you use it wisely? Will you throw it all away pursuing the wrong dreams or the wrong things in life? Will you only focus on the temporal things of this life? Or will you choose to live your life with an eternal view of success?

Question to the group: Do you know what time it is and how valuable that time is? Do you know how to tell time and use it for eternal purposes? Are you using and going to use your time wisely so that it makes a difference for eternity?

Closing video Illustration: “I was Here!” by Blue Fish TV – this clip shows how to make a mark on this world by using our time wisely and for the Lord.