Is the Clock Your Enemy?
Maybe you love getting up in the morning. If so, then this past weekend was no trouble for you even though you had to spring forward. My daughter, who is not great at waking up in the morning, asked this question – “Why can’t we fall back both times?” Maybe she can start some legislation to that end. I’m sure she would get some support.
We are all limited by time. We live inside a framework that was chosen for us by our Creator. Read Genesis 1 and you will see that God divided earthly life into days and months and years. We get accustomed to this framework. Therefore, in every situation where time becomes a constraint we can get pretty anxious or exhausted. Have you ever traveled across the world? If you have you actually know what the term “jet lag” means. Have you ever had a deadline to meet and not enough time for the task at hand? If so, you quickly realize that the clock is not your friend. You feverishly work to complete whatever it is you have to accomplish before it’s too late.
This leads me to the question of the hour, no pun intended. Is the clock your enemy? Do you have enough time to do all of the things for which you are responsible? What’s crazy about all of the convenience and time saving technology of this generation is that we are busier than ever, and everyone is constantly either stressed out or in a hurry or both. But this really has nothing to do with our allotment of time. It still comes 24 hours in a day. The problem is that we try to fit more into each day than in the past. Like the song says, “I’m in a hurry to get things done, I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die, but I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.”
Connected to this, something occurred to me this week that I wanted to share with you. This past Sunday morning I was preaching about salvation and I was doing everything I could to say what I wanted to say and reach every person I could from the pulpit. And when I looked up at the clock, as many preachers do, I became very frustrated! I decided that the clock was my enemy! I wanted to shoot it off the wall! Here we all were, 400+ of us, together worshiping God and there was much more praise to give Jehovah. There was much more honor to bestow upon the Savior. There was much more encouragement to extend from brother to brother. There was much more the Spirit had to say to us through the Word. But we theoretically, according to the way we schedule worship, didn’t have enough time.
I have an eldership that tells me to preach until I’m done. But guess what? In my heart I am never done. Because I know what God has done for me and I know the power of His Word that tells the story. If I really took advantage of their lack of constraints on me I would never stop talking about Jesus, or the church, or the plan, or the Bible in general. I have come to realize that this is part of what the eternality of heaven is for. The love that is in my heart for God is
If Christians have in fact been touched by the cross of Christ, then every heart should feel the words of that old spiritual that says, when it comes to praising or serving or working for the kingdom, we, “Ain’t got time to die.”
So…once more…Is the clock your enemy? If so, why? You see, the “why” is what really matters. Because we have all been given in each day the same amount of time…
“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” – Ephesians 5:15-16
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AUTHOR: Jeremiah Tatum
