About Time (click to comment)

I have officially reached middle age. That time when your age starts to show around your middle. The thing about The Middle Ages is that you start to realize you’re running short on time to do things you vowed you’d do when you were 24. Every few weeks I get together with five other middle-aged guys for something we call the Circle of Six. Lately I’ve noticed that some of us are engaging in activities we wouldn’t have dreamed of back when we had our minds.

One of the guys bought a high-powered motorcycle, then sold it when he came within a whisker of crashing. Another took up hang-gliding and limped to our meeting, holding his lower back and making sounds like he was giving birth to triplets. We told stories of others who had plans for a grand retirement, salted away money for travel only to discover that they’d run out of health; they’d run out of time.

I guess we spend our early years wishing time would hurry up, our middle years trying to find more of it, and our latter years wondering where in the world it went. Time marches on. Everywhere are reminders of time. We have clocks on our wrists and our cell phones, our stereos and dashboards, on street signs and buildings. To avoid the avalanche of time, we: buy juicers, yogacize, nip, tuck, wear Spandex, medicate, diet, visit 4.5 million ‘anti-aging’ websites, then we try another diet; one that ‘really works.’

Psalm 90:12 has helped me on my journey to laugh again. It says, “Teach us how short our lives are, so that we may be wise.” And if we do this, we just may find that we don’t have enough time left for petty stuff like discussing someone else’s failures. We won’t have time for things that are really ugly and disgusting. We won’t have time to sit around comparing what can’t be taken to the next world. Things like bank accounts, titles and temporary achievements.

We discover that time is precious; that we should spend it brightening someone’s day, helping those less privileged, loving the forgotten, and gazing into the night sky. Because of Jesus we are promised the riches of eternity, but for now we are allowed the riches of today.

Tell us. What’s one wise way that you plan on using the time that you’ve been given?