One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven- fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty…
60, the amount of seconds in 1 minute. 1 minute, time.
Sixty seconds isn’t much but it’s enough. It’s enough for a heart to beat at least 60-100 times. It’s enough for light to travel 11 million miles. It’s enough for you to sing the ABC’s three times. It’s enough for you to make your bed or even plank for exercise. Sixty seconds is enough time for both life and death but it’s up to us to choose life.
If it’s enough to complete each of the above in 60 seconds, then can you imagine all the good that can be completed in this world in a lifetime?
There is opportunity for good in each second, minute, hour, day, week, month and year that passes by but it’s not going to come knocking on your door begging you to take advantage of the invite.
Opportunity is something that you have to seek out yourself. It’s something that you have to have a desire for. Opportunity is something that you have to choose.
The opportunities open to us are endless which sounds cliche, I understand, but every second we are handed these gifts by the Father. These gifts are the most beautifully wrapped presents that you could ever imagine but we don’t always open them because we are distracted by other things of this world.
Upon creation of man, God gifted Adam and Eve with a paradise, the Garden of Eden where among them was both good and evil. They were handed so much good but with that they were distracted by the free will of choice. They had been instructed not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because if they did they would surely die but with the time allotted to them they rebuked their responsibilities and went against the way of the Lord.
They had been surrounded by numerous plants and trees bearing good fruit but the one tree they were told to stay away from because of its bad fruit, they were drawn to out of curiosity.
Adam and Eve had been entrusted with a huge responsibility. Their responsibility was for the generations to come, “ Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the Earth” (Genesis 1:28). Instead of investing in what was in front of them, with two options, they chose against what they knew to be right and succeeded in failing to use their time to glorify God.
With seconds and minutes passing by as we speak and as you read, there are choices to be made with the opportunities laid out in front of us. Time is ticking and I don’t want to waste it.
The Lord has been teaching me how important it is to choose my time wisely and in that it must be glorifying to Him.
Living on the island, life is slow. I wake up in the morning and do a workout prior to breakfast at 7:30. Afterwards, teams distribute for morning ministry until about 11:30. At noon we have lunch and afterwards we have “free time” until dinner at 5:30.
You see when I first got here I was discouraged that I had so much unscheduled time but I have come to realize that it is a gift. I have been blessed with a choice. Each day I can choose to lay around after lunch and watch a movie and take a nap or I can be productive and pray for the people I am surrounded by, my ministry, my host, my family at home, YOU- my supporters. I can choose to complain about having “nothing to do” or I can seek out relationships with the kids and God can begin to break down barriers. I can dwell on what I don’t have or I can rejoice and be thankful for all that I do have.
Time. What we do with it, how we use it, where we go with, it is all relevant to how we view ourselves in the world. Whether it’s one second, one minute, one hour, or one day, I don’t want to be pursing the things of this world but using my time in this world to glorigy the creator of it all.
As I finish out my time in Nicaragua and my race in general I want to walk in the freedom of knowing that I made myself available for the Lord to use me at anytime. I want to walk in the good and not waste my time on pursuing the evil like Adam and Eve had. I want everything I do, eat, read and say to be glorifying to Him.
If I am going to claim to live in a way that Jesus did, I want to be so obedient that the Lord may say “well done, my good and faithful servant” at the end of all this.
So, how are you going to spend your time, where are you going to spend it and who are you spending it for?
