I’ve been thinking about the commodity of time. We all know it is a precious thing, once gone it cannot be retrieved. We also know time is the one commodity we can only possess in the present, we can’t save it up for the future.
I remember when I was considerably younger than I am now, I couldn’t wait for the weekend. I was going to catch up on my sleep. I don’t know how I thought that was going to happen. You can’t catch up on something you’ve lost. It doesn’t work that way. You can only be in the present tense. Once something has occurred, like a loss of sleep, it can’t magically be replenished. Yes, we can have a longer period of sleep in the present to rest our bodies and minds, but its not the kind of thing that can be stored up.
Time passes for all of us in exactly the same way, and we only truly exist in the present. Of course none of us know how much time we have going forward, and we can’t recoup any lost time in the past. All any of us can do is to exist in the present.
So sharing time with another person is an incredible gift we should all be cognizant of. When we give our time to someone, that is the rarest and most precious thing we have. We can’t give them our past or future, but giving them our present is beyond compare in regards to value. We don’t know when our last moment will be, so when we give moments to others, it may very well be the last gift we will ever give.
This issue of time and its value really hits home with me. I was present when my Antoine took his last breath. To be present in that moment is more valuable to me than any other possession I have or ever will have. That single moment was excruciatingly hard for me. To witness the passing of the one I loved so dearly. And yet to have missed that moment would have devastated me beyond belief. Antoine knew full well I loved him, and he knew I was present with him.
I spent some time with our resident Bishop Ruben Saenz, Jr., this week. He shared his time with a select group of pastors. He wanted to hear our stories, hopes and dreams. Some time back the bishop had emailed me and promised to come visit the Preston Hollow Church. He had seen and heard some of the wonderful things happening in worship and beyond. When we took a break in our time together, the bishop approached me and said, “Tom, I owe you a visit.” Of course a smile broke out on my face and I said, “yessir, you do. You know you are always welcome anytime.” What he said was any time didn’t get on his schedule, and it would be better if we could arrive at a time he could place on his calendar.
I threw out several dates as the bishop checked his calendar and we were finding how tight his schedule and how precious his time really is. He is currently serving as the bishop of the Horizon Texas Conference, he also has oversight responsibility for the Honduran United Methodist Church, and recently was elected to serve as the President of the Council of Bishops of the entire United Methodist Church. To say he’s busy and stretched, doesn’t even come close to understanding how precious time is for him. He had just gotten back from Africa, a closely approaching trip to Honduras, then to Canada, and now I’m forgetting where else he mentioned he was having to travel. He and his wife Mayé have four children and 11 grandchildren. I can’t imagine he has one spare moment of time.
I’ve shared all this to say, I realize more and more how precious our time really is. When we share it, or when it is shared with us, time is precious and sacred beyond anything else we can compare. The Psalmist in Psalm 90:12 asks God…”So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” When we realize the value of our time, we should want to have the time spent wisely, benefitting ourselves and others.
The letter of James 4:13-14 says…”Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” It slaps us in the face, only this moment are we truly alive, and whatever we do, whatever we say, however we conduct ourselves, it happens now.
God has truly blessed us with each moment we have. The good times, the hard times, the sad times, the happy times, they are all gifts for the moment. When we treat them as gifts, we will be sharing the very best we have with each other.
Your companion on the Way,
Pastor Tom