Monday, July 26, 2010

Time Enough at Last

[title credit to the Twilight Zone episode of the same name.]
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I'm reading the book The Gift of a Year by Mira Kirshenbaum. She says something early in the book that seemed quite profound to me: "Time isn't our enemy. It's our home."
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God has seen fit to set our lives in Time. It looked pretty simple at the beginning: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." Genesis 1:14
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In our twenty-first century world, Time can seem like an enemy. We scramble through our days, trying to get our tasks done before they bury us. We think it's bad when our children are little--too little sleep, too many "drudge-y" tasks. Every day looks the same: wake-up (change diapers), breakfast, lunch, naptime, supper, bedtime. Whew, made it through another day.
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When my children were little, my dear mother and mother-in-love both told me something that, though I "believed" true (because they said so), I could not possibly apprehend. "This is the easiest time you'll have while raising children." Those of you out of the infant/toddler/preschool age know what that means.
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Besides the unending running here and there of school-age children, there is the Worry Factor. We can expend a lot of time worrying, right? My mother-in-love Queen Darl says, "raising children is easier when they are all at home, tucked in bed at night."
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Add to the problem Technology. When I was growing up in the '60's, they spoke of the 21st century as a time when technology would make life so easy, people would be working 20-hour weeks, and our biggest problem would be figuring out what to do with all our free time.
Still waiting for that one.
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The more technology, the more time taken up. (and more $$$, too!) Cellphones are wonderful. We can reach and be reached if needed. Queen Darl thinks I'm nuts to have one: "I used to love to get in the car and do the weekly shopping. No one could reach me for two hours!" Not so today, right?
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"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven." Ecclesiastes 3:1 Don't believe the lie that you can not do all that God called you to do. Do not believe the lie that you are too busy to do those things well. I have good news for you: God has given you enough time to do everything He wants you to do. Including getting enough sleep. Enough time for you and your husband. Even some time for you.
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Prayer:
Lord, help me to see that Time is not my enemy, but a place in which You have chosen to have me live my earthly life. Help me to begin to see areas that I am wasting the time You have given me, or using it carelessly. Help me to begin to live deliberately.
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Challenge: Meditate on the thought that God has given you enough time to do everything He wants you to do. Set aside a little "time" this week to begin to see some of the time-wasters in your life.
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Barb K 2010

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