Time…It’s the stuff of life. It is the only truly non-renewable resource. We can spend a lifetime trying to learn to manage it, and feel, in the end, that we have lost control of it. There are many who want to teach us how to manage and use it, but the more we know, the less we seem to be able to get a handle on it. Our perspective on time isn’t necessarily dependent on age. A thirty-year-old may feel like life is ending, whereas a sixty-year-old may feel that it is really just beginning, If I could go back thirty years, I think I would focus more on this and less on the many other things I obsessed about.

We say that “time heals wounds, is in short supply and heavy demand, equalizes many things.”

So often for many of us—all of us really—life floats in one eye and out the other. If you asked me what I did yesterday, I’d find it hard to tell you.” –Frederick Buechner

We want more time, demand more intense experiences in the time we have, spend time wishing we had spent time better, and in the end run out of time.

Time can be spent but not bought, saved but not stockpiled, given but never loaned. Time can be remembered, but not reversed. You can waste a lifetime but not create an extra hour. Time waits for no one, but nobody knows where it goes. Though it takes only a short time to live a lifetime, the average person wastes enough hours in a decade to earn a college degree. –Neil B. Wiseman, Growing Your Soul

Just think of the time we wasted worrying about things that didn’t happen, things that were not as disastrous as we thought, things that, even though were challenging, painful and difficult, we got through anyway. Think about the time we wasted fearing the future, fearing failure, fearing what other people would think, fearing that we would not measure up.

I guess what has caused me to think more about time lately is that, as I was praying about how the Lord was leading me in a couple of short-term decisions I would be facing, He began to lead me to think long-term. You see, important tasks always take longer than expected. Because we want immediate results, we jump from one method to another, from one approach to another, from one place to another, trying to find what will work. What we need to see is that some tasks simply cannot be completed in a short amount of time. I began to consider what the next decade of ministry would look like. Since I am a year away from 60, I began wondering what I would want to review when I turned 70. What would I like to see when I look back on these next ten years? God kept leading me to ask, “How do YOU want me to spend the next decade, Lord?

Jesus didn’t need longer days nor extended years. He just took the time He had and fitted life into it so well that His work was done when His time was gone. –Pastor Milo Arnold

It’s no secret. My church family knows what I want to do. I want to spend the next decade evangelizing, building, training and leading people. I want to take up the challenge that the Apostle Paul gave to Timothy: “…and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2 ESV). It’s not that I have never done these things before. It’s not even that I am not doing them now, because I am. But I feel the need, the urgency, to pour my all into them with a vengeance because I recognize that the hourglass is emptying and time is running out (at least, for me). I have begun to experience the ravages that time and life exact. Too little sleep, too much to eat, too little exercise, too many demands on an overtaxed body, etc., take their toll. Energy levels sag, memory loss expands, life’s demands remain constant. Whereas only a decade ago, I was juggling four jobs adequately, I find two jobs excessive now. I realize that I am sharing with you what my grandparents and parents shared with me a while ago when I was too young and inexperienced to understand. But you will come to understand only too soon what I am already fully realizing.

I want to be able to look back and say that I invested my life in others, that they are better prepared, fully equipped, and exceedingly fruitful in their lives and ministries because I was faithful to “equip them for the work of the ministry.” I want to leave my mark on the lives of others, so that when I am gone, a piece of me lives in them, the way a piece of a pastor who took me under his wing and invested in me lives in me still. He died of a heart attack at age 44, but he left his fingerprints on my life. He was a candle burning at both ends (he didn’t know how to say “no” the the needs and demands of others), and he was a man of vision, planting a church and building a Christian school. He accomplished much in his forty-four years. But I have always felt that, in some ways, my ministry was an extension of his. He had a wife and four children. He had so much to live for. I don’t know why God did not give him more years to accomplish greater deeds. But Jesus had even less to accomplish his work. I only know that in the short life of that man of God (Rev. Buddy Jester), he touched my life and the lives of so many others that I knew. That’s how I want to be remembered, kept alive in the hearts of those who were touched by my ministry. It’s not about pride or arrogance or me. It’s simply a desire to live a life so well that others are different, better, more like Jesus, because my life touched theirs.

Crowding a life does not always enrich it. –Rose Kennedy

Focus is so important. Think of light. When dissipated and scattered, it fills a room, a world, with light—soothing, warming, life-giving light. When focused as an intense beam, it has unimaginable power, which we have harnessed for science, engineering, technology, medicine, security and industry. While I see my life as the former to this point, I want it to be more like the latter in my remaining years. A life spent doing many things and touching many lives may offer the warm rays of encouragement and benefit, but a focused life can harness the power and energy of intensity to make a more powerful impact. I see this even in the life and ministry of our Lord. His initial years of ministry were like light shining its warm rays on many and giving life, hope and encouragement to many. Sure, some were put off by the light. They squinted, were burnt and ran from the light. They were more comfortable in darkness. But as he approached the end of his life and ministry, we see fewer crowds, more time spent with his disciples, and more time preparing them for the hour at hand. His life became a laser beam of focus on the cross, on accomplishing the purpose for which he had come into the world.

Time levels the playing field. We have different talents and abilities. We have different access to and amounts of resources. We all have the same amount of seconds in an hour, hours in a day, days in a week… My time may run out before yours, but I have the opportunity and responsibility to use what I have been given wisely. How do I do that?

If you will ask God what He would do if it were His life, He would gladly tell you. –Bob Benson

WWJD. It all comes down to asking ourselves, “If this were Christ’s day, Christ’s life, Christ’s time, how would He spend it?” He might spend it at a wedding, helping others to celebrate an important life event. He might spend an evening seeking to enlighten a religious leader about the true nature of spiritual life, new birth. He might spend it on a mountain side or in a boat, sharing the truth through life stories (parables). He might spend it helping a troubled outcast woman to face the demons in her life and find inner satisfaction. He might spend an evening or even an entire night praying. He might spend 40 days and nights in solitude facing the tests and temptations of life. There are so many things we know he did, and many more we don’t know about. But I can say for sure that he would not have considered wasting a minute of his brief time on earth. I don’t want to look back and see a life of wasted years. Makes me think of a song my mother would often sing.

Wasted years wasted years oh how foolish
As you walk on in darkness and fear
Turn around turn around love is calling
Keeps calling me from a life of wasted years

Have you wandered a lot on life’s pathway
Have you lived without love a life of tears
Have you searched for a great higher meaning
Or is your life filled with long wasted years

Wasted years wasted years oh how foolish
As you walk on in darkness and fear
Turn around turn around love is calling
Keeps calling you from a life of wasted years

—Wasted Years by Red Foley

Maybe you’re thinking of something a little more recent and modern. Iron Maiden sings about Wasted Years:

So understand
Don’t waste your time always searching for
those wasted years
Face up… make your stand
And realize you’re living in the golden years

The past is gone and cannot be recovered or repeated. The future is before us yet to be experienced. We have today. The Scriptures make the point clearly:

For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2 ESV)

But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13 ESV)

As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3:15 ESV)

Please forgive the ramblings of an elderly man. For those brave souls who have persevered to read to this point, I don’t confess to have all the answers. I would just encourage you to ask each day, “God, how do you want me to spend this day.” Stop saying you don’t have time. You have all the time you need to do what God wants you to do. If he is to be the Lord of our lives, then he must become the Lord of our time.