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How Do You Spend YourTime?

by Tom Wacaster

Time is a precious commodity that each of us has in

equal proportion. We are all given 24 hours in the day,and 365 days in a year. We are admonished in

Scripture to redeem the time wisely. This simply

means I am to buy up the opportunities that come my

way, and select with great wisdom and prudence how,

and upon what, I will spend those precious hours in

each day. There is an accumulative effect of the use of

time. For example, in an average 70 year life span, the

average person will sleep more than 23 years of his life

away (assuming 8 hours of sleep per night). Over that

same 70 year life span you will spend roughly 14 years

working, 6 years eating, and 5 years traveling

(fortunately, not all at once). By the same token, time

wasted has an accumulative effect, and over the long

haul will rob us of a great deal of what could otherwise

be significant accomplishments. Think, for example,

about the time we spend watching television. The

average American (according to those infamous

"polls") watches TV 6 hours per day. Now that really

seems a little high, so lets reduce that by 30%, and

use a bench mark of 4 hours per day. That amounts to

28 hours per week, 1460 hours per year, for an

accumulative total of more than 72,000 hours in 50

years. Whew! It staggers the imagination. That is

more than 8 years of television!

Now, in comparison, let us consider the "average" time

spent in spiritual matters! If we were to begin the day

of our birth spending five minutes each morning and

evening in prayer and meditation (which is more than

most people spend), and three hours per week in

church, at age 70 we would have invested a total of

just over 20 months! Even if one was to spend an

additional three hours per week in diligent study of the

Bible at home, that would amount to a total of 3.6

years in spiritual involvement of some kind. Lest you

begin to feel that you are robbing from God, let me

encourage you with this observation: Our service to

the Lord is not only measured by the hours we spend

in worship and study. Our devotion to God is measured

by how we live each and every day. We are the salt

of the earth and the light of the world (Matt.5:13-14). How we conduct ourselves in business and

pleasure is as much a part of a demonstration of our

devotion to God as is our weekly worship to Him.

Unfortunately todays generation has been raised on a

steady diet of self indulgence, and along with that has

been a proportionate increase in time spent in pleasure

and reveling rather than productive labor and/or

serious and sobering meditation. One author hit the

nail on the head when he made this observation: It is

a sad consequence of evolutionary theory that many

times people turn inward and only care about

themselvesGod prefers that we love Him first and put

others ahead of ourselves, which means that there isalways something positive to do for another. Whether

it is sharing heartaches or rejoicing in good news, we

always have ways of benefiting others (Gary

Summers, Spiritual Perspectives, 7-3-2011, page 3).

How we spend our time benefiting others in the name

Published on 12-19-2011

11:02 AM Number ofViews: 671

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