Too Busy For God

Why don’t we follow our words with action?

“There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1

Suppose there is a bank that credits your account each and every morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from one day to the next. Every evening deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use that day. What would you do?

WITHDRAW ALL OF IT, of course!

Each of us has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest for a 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 advance withdrawal for tomorrow.

Thinking about time this way makes it obvious that we need to make good use of it. Whatever time we waste, can NEVER, EVER be recovered.

But how can we make good use of time? And what qualifies as a “good” use of time, anyway? No doubt you would start by prioritizing the most important things and working down from there. Then the question would really be what you consider “important” in your life. Your list would probably feature these at the top: God, family, health, work, and so on.

Whatever time we waste, can NEVER, EVER be recovered.

But look closer and you’ll find a contradiction. Notice that many of the things you’d say are very important to you, you really don’t spend much time on. For instance, take a room full of parents. How many hands would go up to this question: “Who believes it’s important to spend time with your children?”

Another example: suppose that room was full of teenage students and the question was “Who believes that getting an education is essential for a good career?” Of course most, if not all, hands in the room would go up to both questions.

But then, look at what most people actually do about those things they say are so important. You’ll see a huge discrepancy - parents letting TV and the internet raise their children and students flunking or barely passing because they didn’t want to study.

And if you ask them to explain the discrepancy between what they say and what they do, the answer will invariably come down to this: ‘I don’t have the time.’

Excuse me. You don’t have the time? I’m sorry, but everybody has time. That excuse doesn’t fly.

There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven, the Word of God says. And it’s what you spend your time on - not what you think about it - that shows what really is important to you. In other words, what you spend time doing shows what truly matters to you.

And as you think about this, here’s another thought: How much time have you been spending actually doing (not thinking) something for God?

We all have things in life to take care of. We all want to succeed, earn lots of money, do well in life. But real success is the success that will stay long after we are gone. That’s why we should invest our time working on our relationship to God, finding our freedom and salvation and seeing that the fulfilment of His promises happen in our lives, and then helping others do the same.

Save souls, starting with our own. It’s the most important use of time for anyone who calls himself a Christian.

Have a great week!

Bishop Renato Cardoso