I led a seminar once (I am still unsure of my qualification and expressed that to the requestor) on time management for a group of college students at a christian conference in Chicago. Ironically enough, 6 months later, completely unrelated to the first, I was asked to lead a time management seminar at a secular conference for college students. Go fig?
One of the points I made in both presentations, was that death empowers time. And some wise person, some while back realized this and created bumper stickers stating "Life is short, so live x..." If life were not limited, we wouldn't need time tables, and we wouldn't have an urgency to live life meaningfully. This rings true for both the believer and non believer. Time makes us think twice about what we do during the day.
But I am realizing that for one person, time is a clock that we watch and dread as we see days and years pass before us, and become overwhelmed by the bucket list items left unchecked. And for the other, time is like the New Years countdown, and the 10, 9, 8 just seems to be happening in slow motion... In both scenarios, there is adrenaline, there is urgency, there may even be bucket list items that they desire to have completed before the clock strikes... but do you see the difference?
Each of us is one of those persons, and we live from an abundance of how we view our time, our clock. As a believer, I know that in 1 Corinthians 15 it tells me that death has no place for me, in fact, Jesus conquered death and in that proved that his promise of eternal life for me is real. So if death is not of God, and the urgency of time is a result of death, then when Christ reclaimed my life through his death, he also reclaimed my time.
Maybe this is what Ephesians 5:16 means when it says, "Redeeming the time because the days our evil..." Redeemed means to "take back" "to compensate good". Jesus has taken back my time and for it has given me good things to do. It is his, for his doing, for his glory, "to make much of Him" as my pastor would say. I am over figuring out how to make much of myself. It gets old.
Always a tension to live live with a certain urgency, and yet at the same time totally devoid of anxiety. The tension between confidence and a healthy dose of self-doubt, risk balanced with the knowledge that ultimately you cannot lose, the shortness of life and the continuity of life, death simply being a blip in your Kindle progress line (of course, how can you put a percentage on eternity?). Good thoughts. Glad to see you're writing on your blog a bit more.
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