‘I only have a minute. Only sixty seconds in it. … Just a tiny little minute. But eternity is in it.’ Those words by Pastor Benjamin Mays remind us again of just how precious the God-given gift of time is. Life is made of moments and none of us have an infinite supply.
The Bible has many metaphors that illustrate just how brief and temporary our existence is here on earth. It’s described as a breath, a flower that fades, and a wisp of smoke that appears for a little while. It’s a sobering thought that should you reach 80 years of age, you will have lived for around just 4,000 weeks. Life, we often learn too late, is in the living. Most people leave this world with a few pounds in the bank, but all of us leave it with no seconds on the clock. Time, therefore, is infinitely more important than money. Once it’s gone, all the gold in the universe can’t buy back a single moment.
And yet how recklessly we treat it. We throw away our days much like the Prodigal Son did his inheritance. The Roman philosopher Seneca said we live as if we are destined to live forever, squandering time as if we drew from a full and abundant supply, not noticing how little of it each of us has. So poorly do we value this gift that we even speak of ‘killing time’ when we’re bored. The reality is, however, that time is killing us.
