From the Pastor's Study
From the Pastor’s Study The Wise Use of Time Nov 16, 2022
Yesterday I attended a pastors’ breakfast hosted by London Christian High. After the meal, we were introduced to six students who were asked to talk about their faith journey and some of the challenges they face. A number of the students talked about the challenge of having regular devotional times, citing how busy their lives were. One student, a young man in Grade 12 told us that he was so busy that he had difficulty finding enough time to sleep. The teacher who was emceeing the event summed up by saying that our youth are so much busier than we were when we were their age.
One of the other pastors at my table, Derek, displayed a little bit of cynicism at that point. The student who said he didn’t have enough time to sleep was a good friend of Derek’s son. Derek said, quite cynically, “He would have a lot more time to sleep if he would spend a lot less time playing video games with my son.” (For those who don’t know about the changes in technology, it is possible to play computer games with others even though they are not physically in the same room. Everything is done via the Internet. What has also changed is that players can talk to each other over the Internet as the are playing the game, making gaming more of a social time than it was when I was in high school.) The lack of time for sleep and personal devotions was self-inflicted, Derek said. The young man could have made time had he wanted to. (Derek also commented that the young man in question didn’t have a job and didn’t want one because he didn’t want anything to interfere with his computer time. The same was true of his son. Derek was quite cynical about several things yesterday morning!)
Several decades ago, it was common wisdom that if you wanted to know someone’s priorities, you should look at how they choose to spend their money. We all need a certain amount of money for our basic necessities: food, shelter, and clothes. In essence, we could all spend about the same amount of money on those things, but some of us choose to spend much more on food, for example, because we eat out more than others. What people do with their discretionary income (money that they have beyond what they need to survive) says a lot about what their priorities are.
I would suggest that a better gauge of one’s priorities today might be time. Money is not in such short supply as it has been in the past (we seem to have more money available to us than decades ago), but time is in short supply. We seem to feel busier than we did in years gone by, and there seems to be many more demands on our time. Even as we say that, it is helpful to note that in order to live we do need to spend time working, cleaning the house, and cooking meals, things that related to the basic necessities. In one week, which consists of 112 waking hours (if we sleep 8 hours at night), we probably spend a bit more than half of that working and doing the basic chores around the house. Beyond that, all of our hours we can spend as we wish. For most of us, we probably have around 50 hours of discretionary time, and how we spend those hours will indicate what our priorities are.
The young man, if Derek is correct, probably spends at least 40 hours (probably much more) every week on the computer, and, of course, that leaves very little time for other things. It is no wonder he feels busy. A few years ago, I felt horribly busy, and I attributed my busyness to the demands of my work. I started to keep a log of the hours I spent doing the work of the church, and I discovered that I was averaging about 50-55 hours every week, which was a lot less than I felt it was. While part of the problem was that I had a lot of different commitments at work (a little overwhelming), what truly was the problem were the things I had decided to do beyond work. And, honestly, I could have and should have let some of those things go.
In seminary, one of my professors gave this advice: in every week we have 21 four-hour periods (8-12, 1-5, 6-10). He told us that our work as pastors should never fill more than 13-14 of those periods, although he recognized that every week would be different. That left 7 or 8 four-hour periods which we could use at our own discretion. Use them wisely, he said, for they are God’s gift to you. I don’t always follow his advice, especially in my wise use of discretionary time, but I will never forget what he said.
In Psalm 90, the psalmist says that we can expect to live 70 years, or 80 if our strength endures. I calculated it, and that means that the average person, after they have done what is necessary to meet their basic needs, will have about 200,000 hours of discretionary time. The psalmist goes on to pray, “Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” We might say, “Teach us, God, to use those 200,000 hours well.” In the context of the psalm and, of course, the rest of Scripture, we are called to use the discretionary hours that God has given to us in ways that honour and glorify him. While those activities which entertain us (screen time, sports, camping, etc.) are certainly to be viewed as a gift of God, they should not so consume us that we feel too busy to do the work entailed in loving our neighbour. In other words, if we feel so busy because we have filled our discretionary hours so full that we have no time to care for others or develop our relationship with God, we are probably doing something wrong. In the past, we might advise others to spend a little less money on themselves so that they can share with those in need. Perhaps today we might do good to advise each other to spend a little less time on ourselves so that we can be a blessing to others.
Time is a gift from the Lord. Let’s use our time wisely.
Pastor Gary
