Time: Welcome Ally or Wasted?

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die,
Ecclesiastes 3:1-2a

Jim Croce would disagree with King Solomon. According to his song Time In A Bottle, "There never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them." I hate to disagree with a King myself but I'm with Jim on this one. Time runs out.

A time to die.

But what if there was still purpose? What if the person who just passed still has things to do? It happens alot in times of war which King Solomon mentions in verse 8. Colonel Potter said it best on M.A.S.H.: "There are two rules in war. Rule number one, young men die and rule number two, you can't change rule number one." 

Yet this time is known to God. Sitting here reflecting on watches, it seems interesting to me that when Ecclesiastes was written mankind wasn't so concerned with exact hours and minutes. They knew it was day when the sun was out and night when the moon and stars were out (pretty much). Then came the sundial but it wasn't until recent history that we wanted a way to know the time on overcast, rainy days.

We wanted a more reliable way to tell time and we came to rely on time. Of course clocks came first and then pocket watches and then wrist watches. But they all spoke to the same desire: to know what time it is since we can never truly know what time is. Sure Solomon made a nice little contrasting list but it's still a mystery.

So we watch the hands move around the dial and we make our appointments and schedule our days and we look for that elusive bottle so we will have enough time. But the watch runs down. No One replaces the battery or winds the stem. The hands are still.

A time to die.

We've laughed, we've cried and hopefully made the most of this mysterious thing we cannot control. The best we can do is mark its passage with busy hands doing The Lord's work aware that time is running out. Maybe that is a watch's greatest purpose, not to help us be on time but to remind us of time so we don't waste it.

This post was sparked by the passing of a dear family friend, Betty McCollum. She used her time well and she had an abundance of it as I believe she was in her early 90's. She served in the church and was a good friend to my mother. She was beautiful inside and out and will be missed by her children and grandchildren.

Time's either welcomed as an opportunity to live for God or wasted. Which camp are you in?