It's About Time!

Thursday morning, November 8, 2007 (9:15AM),
As I begin writing this “perspective”, I am also waiting for the phone to ring; a Mrs. Bloodworth with the Social Security Administration was supposed to call me at 9:00 to assist me in scheduling the January arrival of my Social Security benefits. Since I have been waiting only 65 years and 10 months for these checks to begin arriving, one would think that waiting the past fifteen minutes would be a piece of cake, and it would be, if I didn’t have so many other things that I need to accomplish today. As you might imagine, however, I am choosing to give this call a place of very high priority (for some reason, I have this strange sense of urgency about having these monthly checks deposited into my checking account; it is as if I think the fund might run out of money before I begin receiving them!), so I will wait—probably not so patiently, but I will wait.

Saturday morning, November 10, 2007 (10:54 AM),
Well, I begin again after having been completely distracted for the past 48 hours; however, I did receive the aforementioned call at 9:30 on Thursday morning and, believe it or not, my first Social Security check is scheduled to be deposited into my account on January 16, 2008! Now, that is worth at least one HALLELUJAH!
Anyhoo, have you noticed how much time we spend waiting? Someone goes to the doctor to have a simple test done, and rather than immediately giving him the results (which they usually have), he is told it will be 10 days or 2 weeks before he hears back from the Doc. Or one goes to the grocery store and waits 15 minutes for the person in the front of the line at the checkout counter to fumble through her pocketbook, searching for the money to pay the cashier (Doesn’t everyone know that you have to pay at the cash register?). Or one is “running late” for an appointment, only to arrive at the railroad tracks and find that the slowest and longest train on the planet is barely moving past the cross arms, providing opportunity for a “patient” wait. Or a couple is expecting a baby on March 10th but it comes April 3rd! Or a couple is scheduled to meet another couple at a local restaurant at 7:00 but the wife is just stepping out of the shower at 6:45 and the restaurant is 25 minutes away. Or the Social Security representative is supposed to call at 9:00 but calls at 9:30, acting as if the time you spent waiting was of no value whatsoever. Or someone schedules a counseling appointment for 10:00 AM with Kevin but shows up at 10:20.
Someone once said this to me (out of their frustration with a subcontractor, who was late for a job): Time is money! In his case, this was surely true and, I might add, this is often the case; however, time is more than money, it is precious. Maybe you have forgotten but God has numbered your days: “Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them” (Psalm 139:16).
Maybe, just maybe, we should be better stewards of our time; it is my guess that doing so is much more important than being stewards of our money (which is very important!). How much time are you wasting? How much of the time of others are you wasting by your own irresponsibility regarding your time?
“There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven” and maybe it is TIME for you to become more responsible regarding the time that He has given to you.
Amen? Amen!