Management: Time

Daylight savings is always a great opportunity to think about “time”. So often we get focused on our daily routine and we forget about it, that is until it is “time” for the kids go to bed, or for us to go to bed, or until we’ve forgotten to do something. As we think about time as something we are managing, it puts a different spin on it. It may be easy to look at someone else, such as an employee, and make sure they are managing their time effectively, yet calling ourselves to accountability with how we spend our time is much harder. Of course, we have an advantage (or perhaps a disadvantage); we know everything we do in a day. We know about the days when we wasted time. We also know about the days when we set things up to help make our time more efficient, but found out it didn’t work. This can leave us feeling frustrated and questioning ourselves. Then what do we do?  A friend of mine used to say, “I guess I will start over and try to do better tomorrow.”

Time is always there; it’s a constant.  No matter whether we realize it or not, or even if we want to do it or not, time is something we are managing. It is staring us in the face every time we wake up. It keeps on going and going. There is never a break in the action, not even when we “gain an hour.”  I am pretty sure none of us would ever sign up to manage something 24/7 for the rest of our lives, but that is our situation with time. Yet we know that as humans, our time will come to a crashing halt at some point, we just don’t know when. So with the hours and minutes we do have, we keep on going and try and not beat ourselves up for the mismanagement of time.

That type of attitude toward time can make us not want to think about managing it at all. This is why it is very important to turn our time over to God. If we view time as a gift that God gave us to manage, we begin to move out of the pressure we put on ourselves to manage it perfectly. Also, when we trust that God forgives us for the mismanagement of time, it keeps us in the mind set to use it to the best of our ability.

Recently, I have been visiting someone who has had a lot of questions for the church. Generally speaking, this person has been reluctant to engage me, but my latest visit shocked me. All of the sudden, this person was ready to hear the Gospel message. The tears rolled down this person’s face when reflecting on all the lost time trying to avoid the church and God. I helped to move us quickly away from this mismanagement of time, to the blessing of time, and a new found joy was in this person’s heart as he/she came to church again. The attitude of this person was honestly amazing, and something others have been praying for.  Their prayers were answered, and they were so thankful for my visits.  All of this made me stop and think.  Am I finding the joy in the gift of time?

This weekend we focus on managing time, and we celebrate CCLS Sunday and connect with the school year theme of Ready, Set, Go. Over the years we have watched our association school grow and bless many. They have made disciples of Christ which are now in St. Louis, across the United States, and even in places like Uganda. God has certainly blessed this ministry, and He has allowed us to be a part of it! Now we get to celebrate how we see God’s hand through time, and how God blesses us by teaching us how to manage our time and share the love of Jesus with others. Today we move away from the fear of the lost time, and move into the gift of time that has been given to us.