Tuesday, October 27, 2015
No Wasted Time
Jon Bloom @ DG:
Self-centeredness is a hard habit to break, and yet it is, I believe, the principle thing that Christ seeks to transform in us. One of the things I am reminded of is that if I spend my time concentrating on someone elee's issues, I have less time to worry about my own. That does not mean I try and dominate the life of the other, it simply means that if I work to make the check out girl at the grocery store smile, I usually walk away smiling too. And the day is a little more memorable.
So. to what use are you putting your time?
other time use
Let the unremarkable years of Genesis speak to you. A few days of your life are remarkable, containing events and experiences where you see God’s providence with startling clarity and when your faith and life course are indelibly and memorably shaped. But the vast majority of your days — likely a day like today — will pass into obscurity unrecorded and irretrievable to your memory. But though today may be unremarkable, it is not unimportant. It is unique, priceless, and irreplaceable.I look at the last sentence in that pull quote and I note that most of the uses to which time is being put are about someone else. And then I ask myself about my memorable days - are they when I was an agent to help someone else, or are they when something happened to me?
Today God is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). Today God is at work in you to advance toward completion the good work that he began in you (Philippians 1:6). Today, though unseen and unfelt by you, God is at work in every detail of your history and experience and the history and experience of possibly thousands of others, to bring about answers to your long-requested prayers, to open the door that seems impossibly closed to you, to turn the prodigal homeward, to save your hard-hearted loved-one, to deliver you from the affliction, or to make you an unexpected, remarkable means of grace to someone else.
Self-centeredness is a hard habit to break, and yet it is, I believe, the principle thing that Christ seeks to transform in us. One of the things I am reminded of is that if I spend my time concentrating on someone elee's issues, I have less time to worry about my own. That does not mean I try and dominate the life of the other, it simply means that if I work to make the check out girl at the grocery store smile, I usually walk away smiling too. And the day is a little more memorable.
So. to what use are you putting your time?
other time use
