Time In a Bottle — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

Do you remember the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, starring the late Robin Williams? It was a good movie. Many people went to see it. It was Peter Weir’s masterpiece and succeeded because of the powerful message that it conveyed – the importance of identity, reality of complexity, the lifeline of passion.

And the unforgettable quote by the English teacher to inspire his students to seize the day using the Latin expression carpe diem. Seize the day is a common English saying that encourages you to make the most of your time and opportunities, and the phrase is often used to emphasise the value of living in the present moment and not put things off.

Making the most of the time that you’ve been given on this planet. Remember, what you do today becomes the past immediately. Tomorrow is not some bright future. Just in one day, your tomorrow will become your today. So what happens if you waste your days? Well, probably your tomorrows won’t match your expectations.

Tomorrow becomes our today

In the music world, the accidental death of singer Jim Croce in September 1973 was an immense loss. Jim was a talented entertainer and will be remembered for his 1972 song Time in a Bottle. Have you heard it?

And part of the song says, if I could save time in a bottle, first thing I’d like to do is to save every day till eternity passes away just to spend them with you – if I could make days last forever, if words could make wishes come true, I’d save every day like a treasure, but there never seems to be enough time to do the things you ought to do once you find them.

Jim wrote the words after his wife, Ingrid told him that she was pregnant with their son, Adrian. This really nice song reminds us that we cannot save time in a bottle. Time flows consistently by. No one gets more or less time than anyone else. We choose how we spend our time. We never get it back. So we can’t keep time. We can only spend time.

Someone said, Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you want to, but you can only spend it once. Do you remember Days of Our Lives, the TV show? I don’t think I’ve ever watched an episode, but the musical theme is quite captivating. And who could forget the voice of the late McDonald Carey saying, like sands through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives. I can’t say it like he did.

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But he’s right, you know, sand never runs upward in the hourglass. Every grain of sand, like each day is unrepeatable. It’s a distinctive 24 hour gift from God. We are stewards actually of each day, and if we know our purpose, we can devise our priorities. If we express these priorities through a daily plan, I think we’ll become excellent managers of time.

You can’t see time, but you can see things happening all around you. And so time is an important gift that God has given us, and we shouldn’t waste it. Donald Whitney wrote Spiritual disciplines for the Christian life, and he said, if people threw away their money as thoughtlessly as they throw away their time, we would think they were insane. One of the easiest ways to value your time is to be aware of what your spending it on.

Take some time this morning and even before you go to bed to reflect on what you’ve done and the hours throughout the day, and you may have to make some readjustments. I think it’s helpful to put things into perspective. We think we have all the time in the world, but we don’t. We’re bound in time. We cannot stop the growth of our bodies towards death and decay, despite it being an unpleasant thought.

The Greeks had two words for time Chronos and Kairos. Chronos refers to clock time or the time you can measure. Kairos has a spiritual sense to it. After all, God invented time. Our days and times don’t belong to us. They belong to Him. Let me tell you what the apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian Church. Look carefully at how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. That’s in Ephesians chapter 5.

We want to make the best use of the time God’s given us because we only have a limited amount of time. Have you ever stopped to consider the Christian view that our time is in God’s hands, not our own?

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, thank you that time cannot be put into a bottle. We realise that if we waste time, we can’t get it back. Help us to be wise stewards of the people we are and the gifts and the abilities that you’ve given us so that we can make the best use of time. May that be a lesson I’ve learned today in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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