Our time is but a vapor

I've been confronted this weekend with thoughts on time and how quickly it passes. Time moves on inevitably. It goes on day to day, moment by moment with no regard to what we do with it. Time is fair, in that we all have the same amount given to each of us, 24 hours a day, 365 days in a year. No man buys more time with any amount of worldly goods he has. Time is also unsympathetic, in that it waits for no one and there is no going back. What you have purchased with your time here thus far cannot be refunded or returned. It cannot be traded or fixed. What you have bought affects what you are now and will have effects on what you will be in the future.

You have two options. One is to grasp hold and get as much out of time as possible. The other is to let it slip through your hands. Either way, it is in your grasp.

Two things have come up this weekend that have drawn my mind towards what I have and have not done with my time and what will be of my future. Saturday night, I was with some friends and we watch the movie, Click with Adam Sandler. While his acting is improving, some of his jokes still need to be cleaned up a bit. But, that’s not for this post. I was quite impressed by the premise of the movie. He plays the part of an architect who sacrifices family for business. He gets a remote that allows him to skip to whatever he wants, whether it’s dinner with family or the next promotion. The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground dying. He began to realize after a few jumps that he was losing his whole life waiting for the next big thing instead of making the most of his time now. The next phase in life comes quickly enough without the help of a magical remote.

That leads me to the other event, the video above, that made me think about my time. You see a guy who looks about 20 years old, in five minutes time, become 26. It was quite impacting as I thought back on my life and how the past 6 years really only seem to be like 5 minutes. Likewise, the next 6 years will pass just as quickly.

What am I doing with my time to grab hold and ride it for all it’s worth. While the movie had other thoughts in mind, like making the most of your time with your family, I have other thoughts in mind. Don’t get me wrong. Family is important and you shouldn’t ruin your family life over a job. But, my focus is, what have I done for Christ in the past 6 years of my life? What will I have done in the next 6 years? If I can fast-forward to the end of my life, will I find that I have lived life to the fullest for Christ, or will I have squandered it and regretting my choices?

Eph 5:11-16
Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, "Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you." Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

James 4:13-15
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."

II Cor 5:8-10
We are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

We are called to make use of the time that we have on earth. We are to live it in full abandon to Christ, making most of the time by using it to serve Him. Those things tempting to use up and waste your time are fleeting. They’ll be worthless and forgotten in 6 years. But the life lived in abandon for Christ will have no regrets. That will be life filled with contentment and satisfaction. Instead of thinking to himself, “What happened to these last six years?” he will be rejoicing what the Lord has done in his life during that time.

Let us abandon our selfish pursuits. They won’t matter in six years, much less in eternity. Let us redeem the time and live in total abandon to Christ.