STEWARDSHIP OF TIME

“Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.”  (1 Corinthians 4:1-2 NRSV)

Time. None of us has much of it… The tree that shades the sleepy cow in the pasture may have looked down on our grandfather when he was a boy, and it may remain to watch the passing of our children's children. And that we have so small a store of time constitutes a powerful reason for our making the most of what we have. Yet how many hours have we spent doing nothing or doing the wrong thing. Our cynical waste of precious time could be a reason for our not having more of it given to us, who knows? Jesus once said, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost."

Time wasted is lost beyond recall. While we sympathize with the emotional content of the old song, "Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight," it is yet hard to conceive of a more futile appeal. Time does not run backward. The old man does not become young, the young man becomes old. So it has always been and so it will ever be. The bird of time flies past us and is gone; "the leaves of life keep falling one by one, the wine of life keeps oozing drop by drop." We must work while it is called today.

-- A. W. Tozer

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