How to Keep Time On Your Side

It rules and structures our lives. It is familiar and comforting to us. And it feels like we never have enough of it.

Time can be a tyrant or a friend.

“Time is an illusion, time is a curse; time is all these things and worse,” sings Amy Grant. That’s true if we live bound by time-consciousness, unable to enjoy the presence of God in the present moment because we are mentally checking over our to-do list.

On the other hand, I’ve heard it said, “Time is your friend.”  If we are comfortable with letting time go by, refusing to anxiously micro-manage every minute, time really can be our friend. Time soothes hurts, gives perspective, widens our horizons.

So it all depends how you use it.

In Jesus Calling, I read, “I dwell in timelessness…For you, time is a protection; you’re a frail creature who can only handle twenty-four hour segments of life. Time also can be a tyrant, ticking away endlessly in your mind. Learn to master it, or it will be your master.”

Indeed. I filed the thought away for the moment and got caught up with household duties. At one point I got frustrated with my sub-par vacuum cleaner, thinking, this is not how I wanted my day to go!

My day?  Does it really belong to me? The Psalmist says to God, “My times are in your hands.” It’s not so much about my day as it is about his eternity. He dispenses one day at a time to me, yes, but who really owns that day?

We were created to dwell in eternity. We know from Scripture that time is only a temporary structure and that once we dwell with God face to face we will always be in the present moment with him. Forever.

For now, though, we try to manage these twenty-four hour segments, and lack of time seems to be one of the great felt needs of our culture. We are overly busy, equating activity with worth, so we jam more and more stuff to do into our schedules and live perpetually exhausted lives.

“You’ve got to have some do-nothing time,” a wise elderly friend told me. She was right — the best time management includes “wasting” some of it – something we think of as the great sin of our day. Efficiency is next to godliness. Or is it?

How about you? Have you enjoyed some “do-nothing” time lately? How did it feel?