Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock …

We usually look at the dawning of January 1 as the gift of a New Year. But there may be a message wrapped in that gift that we’re missing — a reminder that time is passing.

Time is the great commodity from which our lives are, quite literally, spent. Arnold Bennett, writing in “Bits & Pieces,” helps us recalibrate our understanding of the value of time …

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions … No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness — the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends — depends on that.

If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one’s whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

The Apostle Paul had an awareness of the passing of time, and seeing that time had passed and continues to pass for us, he wrote with a great sense of urgency:

“This is all the more urgent, for you know how late it is; time is running out. Wake up, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.” – Romans 13:11.

Because time is passing, Paul would also write that we need to produce something of value with the time we have. He put his instruction to us this way: “So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days,” (Eph. 5:16 NLT), or as is more famously phrased in the King James Version of that same verse, “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”

On January 1, we may find ourselves at the start of a New Year, but so much time has already passed! Thus, it’s all the more urgent that we’re wise and productive about what we do with each day we’re given. Because time is passing, it must be “redeemed” for the good of God’s kingdom and His glory. One writer in the “Gospel Herald” interpreted this sense of urgency about redeeming time like this:

If you have work to do — do it now.
If you have a witness to give — give it now.
If you have a soul to win — win him now.
If you have an obligation to discharge — discharge it now.
If you have a debt to pay — pay it now.
If you have a wrong to right — right it now.
If you have a confession to make — make it now.
If you have a preparation to make – make it now.
If you have children to train — train them now.
Remember, time is passing and you are passing out of time.
We are a procrastinating lot. It is always what we are going to do tomorrow that entices us, but it is only what we do today that counts.

As 2018 approaches, are you thinking that you have a big gift of time coming to you for you to spend? Or are you sensing that time is passing and that it needs to be redeemed? How you view a New Year — lots of time, or time is passing — will heavily influence how you spend whatever time you will have.

Scotty