while today

When I was a child summers seemed like they were an eternity long, but now that I’m older I perceive time moving at a much faster pace. Of course, children may find the long car trip to be an eternity, and as parents we hear the annoying, “Are we there yet?” I suspect some of our perception of time has to do with this: for an eight-year-old one year is 1/8 of his or her lifetime, and for a sixty-five-year-old, one year is 1/65 of his or her lifetime. As we accumulate years, they become a smaller percentage of the total. You hear older people talking about and event, and they’ll say, “Has it really been ten years, it seems like only yesterday.”

We must all deal with the flow of time. Yesterday is past; tomorrow is uncertain. I have what the author of Hebrews calls “Today” reflecting on Psalm 95. Matt Perman gives four helpful adjectives to time.*

Time is inelastic. We’ve all experienced it. A deadline looms, and we have too much to do. We wish we had more time than anybody else on the planet. If somehow, we could have our own personal, extra day. I’ve mused about that with sermons and Sunday coming. The Jews had a lunar calendar so periodically they had to insert intercalary months or days to match the solar year. If I could just have that intercalary day between Friday and Saturday, sermon preparation would be easier. But time doesn’t stretch. It is inelastic.

Time is perishable. You can store money in your savings account. You can store canned goods and staples in your pantry and frozen foods in your freezer to eat later. But you can’t store up time to spend later when you need it. Seven days in a week, 24 hours in a day, and 365 days in a year, but no extra time to insert as needed. We only have today.

Time is irreplaceable. Great cooks know about substituting missing ingredients. You are missing 1 teaspoon of baking powder, so you use ⅓ teaspoon of baking soda and ½ teaspoon of cream of tartar. Some ingredients in life can be substituted, but not time.

Time is necessary. You can find activities that don’t require money. You may find some things to do that can be done alone and do not acquire other people. But everything we do requires time. Time is necessary.

Given our relationship with time, I want to live fully for God. I want to be wise. I ponder the following. “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalms 90:12, ESV). “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15–16, ESV). I give thanks for today.

*Matt Perman, How to Get Unstuck, pp. 165-166.