How to Use Time Wisely

Winnie the Pooh is a very wise bear. One of the things that Winnie the Pooh and his friends love to do best is to stand on the footbridge over the creek. They all find twigs and then they drop them in the creek on the upstream side of the bridge. Then they run over to the other railing to see whose twig will emerge first from under the bridge. Will it be Piglet’s, or Tigger’s, or Eeyor’s?

It seems to me that we occasionally need to play this kind of game, too. We need to reflect on our lives in the water that passes under the bridge. We need occasionally to take inventory of what we are doing and what differnece it makes. But unfortunately we all play the game poorly, and some of us not at all. You see we tend to become so preoccuppied on the upstream side of the bridge that we seldom go to the other side to see the results. We get so busy dropping our little twigs into the water that we lose sight of how they fall in the relentless flow of time.

The other day, I was going through my desk and came across some of my old datebooks. These are the books in which I keep track of all my appointments and meetings and other activities. As I leafed through them, it dawned on me that I was looking at a documentary record of my life. And I began to wonder about the question “What difference did all these things make?” “How am I different…how is the world different…and how is the cause of Christ different because I did these things?” I was looking into the water on the downstream side of the bridge. And I had to face the fact that some of the twigs I had so earnestly thrown into the water a few years before had not only produced no ripples, they had sunk without a trace.

The great poet Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote

We lack not rhymes and reasons

As on this whirligig of time

We circle with the seasons.

I have no doubt that most of us feel like we are on a whirligig of time going in circles. In fact I find myself wondering whether Lord Tennyson actually wrote those words as he sat in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. But I would question whether most of us can come up with sound biblical “rhymes and reasons” for the way we spend our time.

I’d like this morning to hesitantly advance a few rhymes and reasons to help us get a handle on how we spend our time. The first principle is to know our purpose.

The American historian Robert Middlekauf, in his book about the Revolutionary War The Glorious Cause, asks “Why did the British lose?” They had the better army, with better trained soldiers. They had a professional supply organization to keep that army in the field. They had overwhelming naval superiority. They actually won more battles than they lost. So why did they lose the war? Because nobody on the British side, from King George, to Lord Rockingham the Prime Minister, to Generals Clinton and Cornwallis knew exactly what they were trying to accomplish. Were they trying to occupy and hold territory, or were they trying to destroy the ragtag rebel forces under Washington, or were they trying to change the political attitudes of the American people? Nobody really knew… so they lost the war for lack of a clearly understood purpose.

We need to know the purpose of our existence. If we are going to spend our time wisely on this spinning planet, we need to know the reason we’ve been put here. When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, God is not going to ask us how busy we were. And he’s not going to be primarily interested in what we did. (You’ll remember that Jesus said that there will be people who did extraordinary things in the name of Jesus Christ who will not get into heaven.) So He’s not primarily interested in what we did as in why we did it. What was our purpose?

The Bible teaches us that we are here on this earth to bring glory to God. We are not here by accident and we are certainly not here to do as we please for our own benefit. The Westminster Confession puts it this way: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” That is our purpose. Our purpose is to focus our own attention on God and draw other people’s attention to God, so that together we may appreciate His excellence. And that is a redemptive purpose. When Paul in Eph. 5:16 said that we should “redeem the time” he didn’t just mean that we shouldn’t waste our time, but that we should use our time for that redemptive purpose.

So when we come to decide how we’re going to use the time God has given us, we need to keep our purpose in view. We need to ask some questions about what we do. We need to ask “Is this activity going to help me to grow to appreciate God better?” “Is this activity going to help me to help others get to know and appreciate God?” I fear that much of what we do not only doesn’t help us in this direction, it actually pulls us away from knowing God.

If we know our purpose, then we will be able to develop the perspective of our life. That is the second principle in using our time wisely.

Jesus, in Matthew 6, said that our focus ought to be on things of eternal value, not on temporal things.

Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

If we are creatures of eternity, if indeed God has “set eternity in the hearts of men”, then we must lift our eyes up from the present to look at where we’re headed.

Over the summer, I had the opportunity to pilot a 17 foot speedboat on Lake Erie. As we headed out of the lake and into the Niagara River, it was important that I keep the nose of the boat pointed toward our destination. The river had a very strong current with a mind of its own. The boat didn’t necessarily want to go where we wanted it to. That is why I had to actively keep it pointing in the right direction.

The same is true of our lives. We need to look where we’re going. We need to keep our eyes on Jesus (Heb.12). If we become so engrossed with the water that flows around us, then we’ll be caught in its current and we’ll shipwreck for sure. Perspective is everything. That is why church is so important. It gives us needed perspective on life.

With our purpose and our perspective, comes priorities. The third priniciple. This is an area where we all struggle: sorting out our priorities… answering the question “What will I do now?”

Out in Nebraska, there is a farm with a very unusual field. This field is sown with various crops in a bewildering arrangement. If you were to walk through this field, you would come upon a strip of alfalfa, then a patch of corn, then an area of soybeans, next to another strip of wheat. But if you flew over that same field in midsummer, you would realize that you are looking at an example of “crop art”. That field, with its different crops of different colors, is actually a magnificent picture which can only be seen from above. But you would never know that from a ground level perspective. The artist, knowing what he was trying to portray, sowed those different plants so that they would form the picture. As he selected the seed, his purpose and his perspective shaped his priorities.

I am convinced that unless we have a firm handle on our purpose (to bring glory to God) and our perspective (that we are creatures destined for eternity), we will never be able to build a sensible set of priorities. You see we all have priorities. Our priorities are shown in the way we spend our time. But where did these priorities come from? Did they come from God? Are they the right priorities? Many people are living their lives according to priorities that are not even their own. They’ve had priorities foisted upon them by the expectations of others, by peer pressure, by the media, by advertizing, by their own inertia. When you look at what you did yesterday and the day before and the day before that, do you get a sense of what your real priorities are?

Most of you work for a living, and you may be saying “Well, how does my work fit into this scheme of priorities?” Well it does fit in if you see your work as a means of bringing glory to God. If you see your work as a vehicle which will allow you to touch the lives of other people and help them to get to know God, then it most certainly does fit in. But if you cannot see your work that way, if you hate your work, if you see it as essentially meaningless, if your work is dehumanizing, then you need to get another job. Life is too precious to waste by living according to someone else’s agenda.

Time is but a fragment of infinity, and we have so little of it. Our lives are like a vapor that appears for awhile then is gone. It is so vital that we spend our time wisely, on things which will help us to know God and help others to know Him, too.