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Time
Redeeming
the Time
Is
there a "family-time famine" in your home? The Family Research Council
Focus on
the family's branch office in
Redeeming
the Time
In
A.W. Tozer's book Man: The Dwelling
Place of God
there is a reference to an Associated Press story about a British
nobleman who died at 89 years of age.
He had inherited great wealth and therefore was free to do whatever he
pleased. According to the article
he "devoted his life to trying to breed the perfect spotted
mouse." Think of it! Rather than using his privileged
position in life
with its potential for serving the Lord and for ministering
to human need
both material and spiritual
he devoted himself to perfecting
spotted mice. No mention was made
of this being a scientific experiment to benefit mankind. It seemed to be no more than a novel
pursuit to satisfy his narrow interest.
Now
let's make this personal. When our life's work is ended
will we
have to say
"Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done
and...indeed all was vanity"? Or will we be able to say
"I have
fought the good fight
I have finished the race
I have kept the faith. Finally
there is laid up for me the
crown of righteousness"? (2 Tim. 4:7
8). We can if we put God first in all we do.
── Michael P. Green《Illustrations for Biblical
Preaching》
Time
When a young man sits next to a hot
stove
a minute seems like an hour. But when a beautiful girl sits next to that
young man
an hour seems like a minute. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching》
Use of Time
A study revealed that an average
seventy-year-old man has spent twenty-four years sleeping
fourteen years
working
eight years in amusements
six years at the dinner table
five years
in transportation
four years in conversation
three years in education
and
two years in studying and reading.
His other four years were spent in
miscellaneous pursuits. Of those four years
he spent forty-five minutes in
church on Sundays
and five minutes were devoted to prayer each day. This adds
up to a not at all impressive total of five months that he gave to God over the
seventy years of his life.
Even if this man had been a faithful
churchgoer who attended Sunday school and three one-hour services per week
he
would have spent only one year and nine months in church!
If you have a question about the above
arithmetic
sit down and figure out how you have been using your time. How
large a portion of it is for the things related to God? When you finish this
exercise
ponder what Jesus said: “What good will it be for a man if he gains
the whole world
yet forfeits his soul?…”(Matt. 16:26
NIV). ──
Michael P. Green《Illustrations for Biblical Preaching》
Time
Time has been called a seamstress
specializing in alterations. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching》
Time
When you kill time
remember that it
has no resurrection. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations
for Biblical Preaching》
The Irish Potato Famine
(1846-1851) resulted in a 30 percent drop in the population of the west of
Ireland. The prolonged suffering of the Irish peasantry had broken the
survivors in body and spirit.
John Bloomfield
the owner
of Castle Caldwell in County Fermanagh
was working on the recovery of his
estate when he noticed that the exteriors of his tenant farmers' small cottages
had a vivid white finish. He was informed that there was a clay deposit on his
property of unusually fine quality. To generate revenue and provide employment
on his estate
he built a pottery at the village of Belleek in 1857. The
unusually fine clay yielded a porcelain china that was translucent with a
glass-like finish. It was worked into traditional Irish designs and was an
immediate success.
Today
Belleek's delicate
strength and its iridescent pearlized glaze is enthusiastically purchased the
world over. This multimillion-dollar industry arose from innovative thinking
during some very anxious times.
Bits & Pieces
June 25
1992.
We missed him. Our chance
to change things came and passed and we did not know it was there. A
dark-skinned little boy sat through Sunday School classes for three years at a
great Baptist Church (First Church
San Antonio) but some one missed him. His
name was Sirhan Sirhan
and at age 24 he shot and killed Senator Robert
Kennedy. In a welter of words and the shudder of grief throughout our nation
the persistent thought keeps recurring...someone missed him.
Dr. Jimmy Allen
former
pastor of First Baptist Chruch
San Antonio
Texas in Pulpit Helps
May
1991.
Some years ago an
energetic young man began as a clerk in a hardware store. Like many old- time
hardware stores
the inventory included thousands of dollars' worth of items
that were obsolete or seldom called for by customers. The young man was smart
enough to know that no thriving business could carry such an inventory and
still show a healthy profit. He proposed a sale to get rid of the stuff. The
owner was reluctant but finally agreed to let him set up a table in the middle
of the store and try to sell off a few of the oldest items. Every product was
priced at ten cents. The sale was a success and the young fellow got permission
to run a second sale. It
too
went over just as well as the first. This gave
the young clerk an idea. Why not open a store that would sell only nickel and
dime items? He could run the store and his boss could supply the capital.
The young man's boss was
not enthusiastic. "The plan will never work
" he said
"because
you can't find enough items to sell at a nickel and a dime." The young man
was disappointed but eventually went ahead on his own and made a fortune out of
the idea. His name was F.W. Woolworth.
Years later his old boss
lamented
"As near as I can figure it
every word I used in turning
Woolworth down has cost me about a million dollars!"
Bits and Pieces
Vol. F
#41.
In 1269 Kublai Khan sent a
request from Peking to Rome for "a hundred wise men of the Christian
religion...And so I shall be baptized
and when I shall be baptized all my
baron and great men will be baptized
and their subjects baptized
and so there
will be more Christian here than there are in your parts." The Mongols were
then wavering in the choice of a religion. It might have been
as Kublai
forecast
the greatest mass religious movement the world has ever seen. The
history of all Asia would have been changed.
But what actually
happened? Pope Gregory X answered by sending two Domnican friars. They got as
far as Armenia
could endure no longer and returned home. So passed the
greatest missionary opportunity in the history of the church.
R. Dunkerly
in
Resource
No. 2.
An airline pilot flying
over the southeastern U.S. called the local tower and said
"We are
passing over at 35
000--give us a time check." The tower said
"What
airline are you?" "What difference does it make? I just want the
time." replied the pilot. The tower responded
"Oh
it makes a lot of
difference. If you are TransWorld Airline or Pan Am
it is 1600. If you are
United or Delta
it is 4 o'clock. If you are Southern Airways
the little hand
is on the 4 and the big hand is on the 12. If you are Skyway Airlines--it's
Thursday."
Peter Dieson
The
Priority of Knowing God
p.91.
Better three hours too
soon than one minute late.
William Shakespeare.
In his youth
Andrew
Carnegie
the famous steelmaker
worked for Thomas A. Scott
the local
superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Carnegie was employed as a
telegrapher
secretary
and general factotum at $35 a month.
One morning a serious
railroad accident delayed the passenger trains and shunted freight trains onto
the sidings
unable to move in either direction.
Scott could not be located
so Carnegie plunged into the breach -- knowing what had to be done
but also
aware that an error could cost him his job and perhaps criminal prosecution. He
signed Scott's name to the orders and got the trains moving with no mishaps.
When Scott arrived at the office
Carnegie told him what had happened. Scott
carefully looked over everything that the boy had done
and said nothing.
"But I noticed
" Carnegie said
"that he came in very regularly
and in good time for some mornings after that."
Bits & Pieces
April 30
1992.
No illustrations
yet.
IN a 24 hour period
if
you're an adult of average weight
here is what you accomplish:
Your heart beats 103
689
times
Your blood travels 168
000
000 miles
You breathe 23
040 times
You inhale 438 cubic feet of air.
You eat 3.25 pounds of food
You drink 2.9 quarts of liquids
You lose 7/8 pound of waste.
You speak 4
800 words
including some unnecessary ones
You move 750 muscles
Your nails grow .000046 inch
Your hair grows .01714 inch
You exercise 7
000
000 brain cells.
Feel tired?
Source Unknown.
Time of the Mad Atom
This is the age
Of the half-read page.
And the quick hash
And the mad dash.
The bright night
With the nerves tight
The plane hop
With the brief stop.
The lamp tan
In short span.
The Big Shot
In a good spot
And the brain strain
The heart pain.
And the cat naps
Till the spring snaps --
And the fun's done!
Reprinted from The
Saturday Evening Post
1949
The Curtis Publishing Co.
Courage - You
Can Stand Strong in the Face of Fear
Jon Johnston
1990
SP Publications
p. 143.
Time is the inexplicable
raw material of everything. With it
all is possible; without it
nothing. The
supply of time is truly a daily miracle
an affair genuinely astonishing when
one examines it. You wake up in the morning
and lo! your purse is magically
filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of
your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions... No one can
take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives
either more or less than you receive. Moreover
you cannot draw on its future.
Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot
waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept
for you.
You have to live on this
twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health
pleasure
money
content
respect
and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right
use
its most effective use
is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most
thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness -- the elusive prize
that you are all clutching for
my friends -- depends on that.
If one cannot arrange that
an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of
expenditure
one does muddle one's whole life indefinitely. We shall never have
any more time. We have
and we have always had
all the time there is.
Arnold Bennett
Bits
& Pieces
March 4
1993
p. 18-20.
No Time to Play
My precious boy with the
golden hair
Came up one day beside my chair
And fell upon his bended knee
And said
幈h
Mommy
please play with
me!?/font>
I said
幞ot now
go on and play;
I𠐔e got so much to do today.?br> He smiled through tears in eyes
so blue
When I said
㜁e𠑥l play when I get through.?/font>
But the chores lasted all
through the day
And I never did find time to play.
When supper was over and dishes done
I was much too tired for my little son.
I tucked him in and kissed
his cheek
And watched my angel fall asleep.
As I tossed and turned upon my bed
Those words kept ringing in my head
幞ot now
son
go on and play
I𠐔e got so much to do today.?br> I fell asleep and in a minute𠏋 span
My little boy is a full-grown man.
No toys are there to
clutter the floor;
No dirty fingerprints on the door;
No snacks to fix; no tears to dry;
The rooms just echo my lonely sigh.
And now I𠐔e got the time to play;
But my precious boy is gone away.
I awoke myself with a pitiful scream
And realized it was just a dream
For across the room in his
little bed
Lay my curly-haired boy
the sleepy-head.
My work will wait 𩾷il another day
For now I must find some time to play.
Dianna (Mrs. Joe) Neal.
As if you could kill time
without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau.
The great 19th-century
naturalist and Harvard professor Louis Agassiz was once approached by the
emissary of a learned society and invited to address its members. Agassiz
declined the invitation
saying that lectures of this kind took up too much
time that should be devoted to research and writing. The man persisted
saying
that the society was prepared to pay handsomely for the lecture.
"That's no inducement
to me
" Agassiz replied
"I can't afford to waste my time making
money."
Today in the Word
June 4
1992.
If you had a bank that
credited your account each morning with $86
000 that carried over no balance
from day to day...Allowed you to keep no cash in your account
and every
evening cancelled whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day
what would you do? Draw out every cent every day
of course
and use it to your
advantage! Well
you have such a bank
and its name is TIME! Every morning it
credits you with 86
400 seconds. Every night it rules off as lost whatever of
this you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balances
it
allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account with you. If you fail to
use the day's deposits
the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no
drawing against tomorrow.
Source Unknown.
Teach us to number our
days aright
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12.
Time is the coin of your
life. It is the only coin you have
and only you can determine how it will be
spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg.
What if you were given
$1440.00 at the start of each day to use as you see fit
the only stipulation
being that you must give back what you haven't spent by the end of the day?
Source Unknown.
Time is nature's way of
keeping everything from happening at once.
Source Unknown.
We master our minutes
or
we become slaves to them; we use time
or time uses us.
Source Unknown.
More time is wasted not in
hours but in minutes. A bucket with a small hole in the bottom gets just as
empty as a bucket that is deliberately kicked over.
Source Unknown.
Common advice given to
people who want to improve their use of time is to focus on what contributes
most. The inverse
however
is also a worthy pursuit. What does not contribute but
only wastes time? Try listing all the "time wasters" in a typical
week and then rank them on the basis of their degree of time misuse. Ask
questions: "What would happen if I didn't do this? Would it make a
significant difference? Can I delegate this?"
Bits and Pieces
May 1990
p.
18.
Parents rate their
inability to spend enough time with their children as the greatest threat to
the family. In a survey conducted for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
Corp.
35 percent pointed to time constraints as the most important reason for
the decline in family values. Another 22 percent mentioned a lack of parental
discipline. While 63 percent listed family as their greatest source of
pleasure
only 44 percent described the quality of family life in America as
good or excellent. And only 34 percent expected it to be good or excellent by
1999. Despite their expressed desire for more family time
two-thirds of those
surveyed say they would probably accept a job that required more time away from
home if it offered higher income or greater prestige.
Moody Monthly
December
1989
p. 72.
We are always complaining
that our days are few
and acting as though there would be no end.
Seneca.
Millions long for
immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday
afternoon.
Susan Ertz.
When as a child I laughed
and wept
time
crept.
When as a youth I dreamed and talked
time
walked.
When I became a full grown man
time
ran.
And later as I older grew
time
flew.
Soon I shall find while traveling on
time gone.
Source Unknown.
How often have you talked
with someone on the telephone who seemed to be in a hurry and wanted to get on
with more important business? Or visited with someone on the street and
received that same hurried feeling? You've undoubtedly experienced it...and
didn't enjoy it. And
perhaps
you have also been guilty of this. If you have
why not decide to tithe time
save up chunks
bits and pieces of it
and give
them away to people who interrupt your pre-established plans?
It is a great principle of
love that people don't interrupt
not really. Perhaps there shouldn't even be
such a word as interrupt; for when people come into your existence
even for a
brief time
that is a wonderful moment of experience for both of you. Relish
it. Probe it. Invest some of the time you have tithed. We can't afford to
indulge in the luxury of "being too busy and important" for another
person.
We have time for such
inanimate things as pieces of mail
vast sprawling shopping centers
the
television program which starts at 7:30. But what about relationships with
people? Isn't that a great deal of what life is all about--loving other people?
Remember Jesus? How he raced about
hurrying from one city to another
collecting great crowds on the way to give them a few minutes of hurried
heaven-data
then dashing on to the next place?
No
that is not the
picture of Jesus the New Testament gives. He had time for people. In a crowd
a
woman touched his robe. Lots of people were probably pushing against him
touching his robe
but he discerned the urgency in this particular touch. He
stopped
taking valuable time for this "interruption." His disciples
were full of fire and computer-like- efficiency. They wanted to get on with the
task of getting something done
even if they didn't always know what that
"something" was.
Once a bunch of small
grimy-fingered kids came along and wanted to climb on the Master's lap.
"Get those kids out of here
" thought the goal-oriented disciples.
"No
let them stay.
Let's enjoy them and let them enjoy us
" thought the true-goal-oriented
Man from heaven who knew and expressed the great worth of the individual.
The next time a person
"interrupts" you
think not of your work and your deadlines; rather
think of that person's needs
of his covert compliment in desiring to spend a
few moments with you. Your meeting may be a significant point in each of your
lives
because it is an encounter with another person God has created. you may
impart something crucial to his fulfillment--or he to yours.
Paul prayed: "May
God
who gives patience
steadiness
and encouragement
help you to live in
complete harmony with each other--each with the attitude of Christ toward the
other" (Rom. 15:5
TLB). Are you caught up on your time-tithe?
Monte Unger
NAVLOG
January
1975.
In a lifetime the average
American will spend:
Six months sitting at
stoplights
Eight months opening junk mail
One year looking for misplaced objects
2 years unsuccessfully returning phone calls
4 years doing housework
5 years waiting in line
6 years eating
Survey of 6000 people
polled in 1988
U.S. News and World Report
Jan 30
1989
p. 81.
Dost thou love life? Then
do not squander time
for it is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin.
I have so much to do today
that I shall spend the first 3 hours in prayer.
Martin Luther.
What happened to Time?
o When as a child
I laughed and wept
time crept.
o When as a youth
I dreamed and talked
time walked.
o When I became a
full grown man
time ran.
o And later as I
older grew
time flew.
o Soon I shall
find while traveling on
time gone.
Source Unknown
How would you like to
spend 2 years making phone calls to people who aren't home? Sound absurd?
According to one time management study
that's how much time the average person
spends trying to return calls to people who never seem to be in. Not only that
we spend 6 months waiting for the traffic light to turn green
and another 8
months reading junk mail. These unusual statistics should cause us to do
time-use evaluation. Once we recognize that simple "life maintenance"
can chip away at our time in such huge blocks
we will see how vital it is that
we don't busy ourselves "in vain" (Ps 39:6).
Psalm 39 gives us some
perspective. In David's complaint to God
he said
"You have made my days
as handbreadths
and my age is as nothing before You" (V. 5). He meant
that to an eternal God our time on earth is brief. And He doesn't want us to
waste it. When we do
we throw away one of the most precious commodities He
gives us. Each minute is an irretrievable gift--and unredeemable slice of eternity.
Sure
we have to make the phone calls
and we must wait at the light. But what
about the rest of our time? Are we using it to advance the cause of Christ and
to enhance our relationship with Him? Is our time well spent?
Source Unknown.
ALL TIMES.
Ⅰ. Praise. “ I will bless the Lord at all
times” (Psalm 34:1).
Ⅱ. Trust. “ Trust in Him at all times” (
Psalm 62:8).
Ⅲ. Righteousness. “ Blessed……he that doeth
righteousness at all times” (Psalm 106:3).
Ⅳ. Longing. “ My soul breaketh for the
longing that it hath unto Thy judgments at all times” (Psalm 119:20).
Ⅴ. Friendship. “ A friend loveth at all
times” (Prov.17:17).
Ⅵ. Zeal. “ Good to be zealously affected at
all times” (Galatians. 55:18
R.V.).
Ⅶ. Peace. “ The Lord of peace Himself give
you peace at all times” (2 Thess.3:16
R.V.).
──
F.E. Marsh《Five Hundred Bible Readings》