What is your most precious commodity ? Family Heirloom, Property, Jewelry, special ornament, photo (sentimental value). Mine is time.   

 

As I have watched the Olympics, reflecting on Time. Success in many Olympic sports is measured in time – for the fastest qualifiers to get into the next heat. Even in the final itself if you don’t win then it is a question of how does the time compare with your personal best, Olympic record, or world record.

 

That made me think about how I spent my time. Have you ever analysed a typical day? What do you spend most time on ? 

 

When I looked back over the past few weeks I discovered the following pattern :

Sleeping – 7-8 hours (33%)

Eating – 2.5 hours (10%)

Work inc Travel – 10 hours (40%)

Exercise – 1 hour (4%)

Washing etc – 0.5 hour (2%)

Internet – 0.5 hour (2%)

Family – 1 hour (4%)

Other – 0.5 hour

 

I was staggered to read that Steve Redgrave trained for 5 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 4 years. That is over 5,000 hours training  to win a race that lasted less than 6 minutes. This level of training represented a significant investment that impacted on other aspects of his life.

What could he have done with all that time on his hands if he decided not to compete in the Sydney Olympics ?

 

Over 50 years ago a group of management scientists led by Frederick Taylor decided that if you analysed how people work then you could make them more efficient. This set in train a series of Time and motion studies where observers spent days watching every action of a group in the workplace, noting down every move to see whether it contributed to the goals of the enterprise or not.

 

Their results were fascinating. The productivity of those who they were watching increased compared to another group involved in a similar task. However it transpired that rather than their methods that improved things, it was primarily the fact that others were taking an interest in what the group was doing which led to the increase in productivity.   

 

Now no matter how much planning I do, I never seem to have enough time to fit everything in. Inevitably I seem to be chasing my tail at the end of the day. My inability to do every task on my list of “Things to do Today” can lead to a sense of frustration and feelings of inadequacy. 

 

If this sounds familiar, help is at hand. On the web, there are numerous organisations offering to help you manage your time more effectively.

 

Here is a sample :

 

1.     You could go on a Time Management programme – ensure that you set the right priorities, plan the different parts of your task, wander around with a huge “Diary” with different colour pages for your filofax, with list of things to do.

2.     Or there is BT’s Timesmart – calculate how much your time is worth – except it takes an age to load the page onto your PC, which is great news if you are billing by the minute

3.     Where I work the business management system is built around time management as we charge by the hour. Critical for people to record their time so that we can see how much is chargeable as opposed to under utilised work

 

The western world revolves around time – no-one ever has enough of it, meetings have to start and finish punctually. Consider the stress that is caused, not to mention traffic accidents as people try and do the impossible. It is ironic that in this age of leisure, when we have so much materially, there is so little time to enjoy it

 

Everything has its rightful place. Even our service is governed by time considerations. The risk is that we can miss out on worship because we are so intent on running it like clockwork. Rather than allowing time to listen for the still small voice of calm, we are driven by the need to keep everything to schedule.

 

By concentrating on the time it is easy to become very task oriented, and forget the impact on other people. Conversations can become superficial. If I ask you how you are, the last thing I want to hear is a 10 minute diatribe about all your problems because to be honest I can’t spare the time.         

 

When I was younger, people used to tell me that time flies as you get older. Didn’t believe them, it always seemed to take an age for my birthday or Christmas to come round. Now, although days are exactly the same length, and I no longer have homework to keep me occupied in the evening, I seldom have time to relax.

 

Instead my electronic diary tells me how many weeks are left in the year (13!), soon we will be counting down to Christmas, and then the first year of the Millenium will be over (and everyone will forget about the Millenium Dome)

 

The writer of Ecclesiastes had reached the point where he decided there was a certain inevitability about life. Things had become regimented almost as if he was following the lines of a play – Waiting for Godot - life had become a drudge. He remarked there was 

 

·         A time to be born, and a time to die

 

·         A time to plant, and as we recalled last week, a time to harvest.

 

·         A time to mourn and a time to dance.

 

Starting to question the meaning of life – What does the worker gain from his toil ?

 

Yet in the midst of his depression, he still recognises that “God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men”

 

Eternity is a difficult concept to grasp. It is outside our conception of time which is measured in minutes, hours, days and years. Earthly patterns are pretty meaningless in the context of eternity. For us who think of life as lasting 80 – 85 years all time is as nothing to God.

 

James reminds us that at the point of judgement we will be called to account for the use of our resources (including time). There is no doubt in his mind that we will be judged. In a reference to the Beautitudes he castigates the rich because their fine cloth has rotted, their gold has rusted.

 

Now James is not criticising their wealth per se. No his criticism is that they have hoarded what God has given them rather than used it to support the wider community. They have not recognised that everything comes from God, and so they have ignored that their wealth could be used more productively. They are just like the servant who buried his talent in the ground for fear that it wouldn’t be there when it was required.

 

James is clear that God will condemn the rich for their failure to use their resources to help others. I wonder whether God will call us to account for the way that we have used our time. After all everyone is given the same amount each day but we use it quite differently.

 

Looking back over the past week what does our use of time as summarised in this pie chart say about our priorities? As we walk about the village are we too busy to speak to someone who we can see is lonely. What may only be a few moments of our time could make a world of difference to someone who doesn’t have anyone to talk to. 

 

Once a journalist asked Lee Iacocca, a former President of Chrysler, what was the secret of his success. His reply was “If you want to make good use of your time, you’ve got to know what’s most important and then give it all you’ve got”.

 

As Christians we subscribe to a belief that nothing on earth is so important that it should get between us and God. The apostle Paul, when reflecting on his pedigree as a Jew, and a Roman citizen, explained that everything else was worthless compared to the saving grace of God.

 

Few of us would enter into a marriage before we got to know the other party. Even then the ceremony is a beginning of a journey together, not an end. The relationship needs to be nurtured, priorities adjusted to ensure that there is time together.

 

As Christians we have set out on a journey with God, but if we are not careful it is easy for everything else to crowd in so that there is no time left to talk and listen to God so that our relationship grows. Rather than being the first thing in our lives, our time with God can become squeezed in to any spare moments. The accepted conventions of the day become the benchmarks against which we set our priorities, and spiritual issues become an afterthought.    

 

It is sobering as the Olympics come to a close that Steve Redgrave regarded winning a 5^th gold medal as sufficiently important to dedicate the equivalent of 10 months of his life in training for. If that is the investment he was prepared to make for a race which lasted 6 minutes, then how should we be spending our time as we look forward to eternity?

 

 

 

 

Simon de Bell