Exodus 20:1–17 ‘Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.’ (vv8–10)
Each week has 168 hours. A friend, at their sixtieth birthday, calculated they’d lived a total of 720 months, 3128 weeks and 21,900 days. I couldn’t help wondering how I’d managed to fill so many hours in my own life; a stark reminder of just how quickly time disappears.
If we calculate working seven hours a day for five days and sleeping eight hours a night for seven days, that still leaves us 77 hours every week. How are the majority of those hours spent?
In our busy world, as we struggle to keep our heads above the economic waterline, how can we apply God’s command to rest? In Britain, this was traditionally Sunday, but involvement in a lively church turns Sunday into a busy day.
Life’s less about a lack of time and more about how best to track those lost 77 hours! My initial approach to recover lost time was to delete things from my life. I soon found this was unproductive because I was distracted and resented missing my favourite TV shows. I changed tack. So now I consider what sort of life I want. Once I’ve settled on that, finding, or rather making, time became so much easier.
I could identify my priorities in how best to explore a contemplative life. I discovered the wisdom in recognising the power of small moments. Reclaiming an hour was a challenge, and it was always full of distractions, yet finding five minutes, was not so challenging.
SCRIPTURE TO CONSIDER:
Deut. 7:7–26; Hos. 13:4–8; Acts. 7:37–53; Rom. 8:5–11
AN ACTION TO TAKE:
How might you move from being a time chaser to a time maker?
What is it you want from life and what priorities do you need
to set to attempt to realise it?
A PRAYER TO MAKE:
‘Lord, help me to find what it is I want to do with my life, and then find ways for achieving this. Amen.’
Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash
