EPHESIANS 5:15-16 – Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.

THEME OF THE DAY. OUR MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE. I have an interesting book in my library. It is “Redeeming the Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure” by Leland Ryken. Chapter three is titled, “Time’s Winged Chariot: The Time Famine.” Ryken writes, “ ‘There is a time for every matter under heaven’ claimed the ancient wise man (Solomon). While it is true, a new twist has developed: there is no longer enough time for everything – perhaps not enough time for anything that we truly value. It is no wonder that recent years have produced the concept of ‘the time famine.’ The result of this famine is that most people feel rushed and frantic in their weekly routine, as well as guilty about what they have not accomplished. The personal toll that the pace of life has exacted from us is something that nearly everyone has observed and felt. For one thing, our lives have become overly scheduled as they are dominated by the calendar and the clock. We schedule our leisure times and then peer at our watches anxiously to make sure that our leisure does not exceed its allotted time. Family life has also been transformed. Increasingly family activities must be arranged by appointment. It is a full-time job to keep the family’s schedule coordinated and updated. No statistics can record the physical, psychic, and emotional strain that the time famine places on us. For the most part, all of us know from personal experience the syndrome of always feeling harried and tired. Even if a few hours miraculously appear some evening, most people resort to television because they lack the energy to do anything else.”

There are many striking and eye-opening characteristics one observes in Jesus as He walked upon the earth. One that stands out to me in line with today’s nugget theme is that Jesus did not live rushed and hurried. He was never late but always on time, and we find not one single incident of stress because of busyness or lack of time in His life. Jesus never suffered the “time crunch”. And His life was fuller and busier than any of ours, yet, we find Him controlled and not rushing around frantically going from one thing to another, fretting over time.

In today’s scripture, the Apostle Paul is exhorting the Ephesians and us to be wise, carefully planning, on how we are to use our most precious resource God has given us; our time. Piggy-backing on the opening paragraph from Ryken’s book, let me add this . . . we live in a fast-paced culture that is not only given over to everything fast and quickly obtained, but we also are a society consumed, even possessed, with an insatiable desire for entertainment, pleasure, and recreation. And Christians have been adversely impacted by this cultural obsession. It says a lot about us, and not in a good way, as professed followers of Jesus Christ if we give more of our free time to earthly pursuits and pleasures than serving the purposes and causes of our Lord Jesus Christ. When our effort, resources, and time finds its direction more to hobbies, recreations, and relaxation than to training our families in Godliness; the work of the Gospel; serving God’s people; being in our Bibles; and faithfulness to our churches, we are in need of God sending a “revival of priorities.” We are missing our calling and the very reasons we still exist on earth. This is not a call to abandon earthly responsibilities, and certainly not to neglect needed times of refreshments. But it is a call to evaluate how we are using our most precious resource – our time. And we are told in the last days that an overt obsession with ease and pleasure will mark those days – “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).

Let’s pray and ask God to help use our greatest resource – time. It is equal for all of us and it is the springboard that will set the stage for our Day of Judgment before the Lord Jesus. May God help us use it wisely and eternally.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to live each day of my life as if it were my last.”

QUOTE: “How we use our time reveals where our heart is fixed – on the world or on eternity”