THE VALUE OF TIME

What Are You Doing With Your Time?

Rich or poor, old or young, male or female, we all have the same amount of one thing—time. How we use it will largely determine how far we’ll go in life and in our relationship with our Creator.
by Ralph Levy

Imagine there is a bank that deposits $86,400 into your account each morning. But there's a catch—it carries over no balance from day to day, so you lose every dollar you don't spend.
What would you do? You'd spend every cent, of course!

But each of us has just such a bank. Its name is time. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance; it allows no overdraft.

Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow.

You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success. The clock is running. Will you make the most of the time you've been given?

Does time matter that much?

Is time—a little or a lot—all that important? Consider the following:

To realize the value of one year,
ask a student who failed a grade.

To realize the value of one month,
ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one week,
ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one day,
ask a daily-wage laborer with several children's mouths to feed.

To realize the value of one hour,
ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of one minute,
ask a person who missed the train.

To realize the value of one second,
ask a person who just avoided an accident.

To realize the value of one millisecond,
ask a person who won a silver medal at the Olympics.

The anonymous author of these words helps us realize just how important time is.
Jesus Christ told us to be careful how we handle our time, asking, "Are there not twelve hours in the day [the daylight portion of the 24-hour cycle]? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of the world. But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him" (John 11:9-10).

And the apostle Paul felt it necessary to remind the Christians in Ephesus that they ought to be "redeeming [buying back] the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:16; compare Colossians 4:5).

Time: It's what our lives are composed of. Yet in this busy modern world it has become all too easy to let time, the stuff of life, run away from us. E-mails, new software, multiple television channels, cell phones and all the other products of the technological revolution that were supposed to have simplified and enhanced the quality of our lives seem to have conspired to strip us of the time needed for the really important things of life.

What are some of the important things that should occupy our time? How does God tell us to use our time? Here's a checklist of the truly important activities that should be included in our day.

hmm.... the very impt of times
jireh,timing off
:)