Daily devotion – Time travels so fast!
Psalm 27:4
“One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his temple.”
August 1st has arrived. We are moving ever closer to spring, and remarkably, it is now only 146 days until Christmas!
Time is a strange thing.
When you are young, time seems to drag. You are always looking forward to the next age bracket. “I’m nine, but nearly ten!” You could not wait to become a teenager. Then came that magic age of seventeen when you could finally get your driver’s licence.
But didn’t those years and days just draaaaag?
Then, as the years go by, something happens. Time seems to pick up speed.
When you are in your late teens or early twenties, someone who is thirty seems to be approaching middle age. Anyone who is forty or older is now considered “old.”
Then, a few years later, you reach forty yourself and suddenly realise that forty isn’t old at all. In fact, you are just hitting your prime!
Eventually you reach sixty and discover that something dramatic has happened. You look in the mirror and realise that the person looking back at you doesn’t quite look like the person you remember being. Nobody warned you this was coming!
And then, to make matters worse, you hear someone actually refer to you as an “old man.”
At that point, when someone asks your age, you simply tell them that the information is contained in the secret files in the same drawer as the assassination of JFK—and quickly change the subject!
But there is something far more serious about the passing of time.
Time is precious because time is limited.
This Sunday in Exodus, we will see that it is not “Father Time” who ultimately controls the clock of our lives. God is sovereign over our days. After God redeemed Israel from Egypt, He instructed them concerning how they were to order their lives and use their time.
Their time belonged to God.
And so does ours.
Psalm 39:5 says:
“Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity.”
David reminds us just how brief our lives really are. From God’s eternal perspective, even a long human life is but a moment.
When we were born again, our understanding of time should have changed. We no longer live simply to fill our days with whatever pleases us. Our time has become an opportunity to serve the One who redeemed us.
Psalm 37:18 says:
“The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.”
God knows our days.
He knows how many we have. He knows what each day contains. He knows the opportunities He will place before us and the people He will bring across our path.
One day, we will stand before Him. No one will be able to say, “Lord, I needed more time. I didn’t have enough time.”
We have been given the time God intended us to have.
So perhaps we should stop occasionally and examine our calendars, diaries and weekly schedules. In only a few moments, we can discover what we are doing with the precious time God has entrusted to us.
How much time is given to work?
How much to entertainment?
How much to our phones and screens?
How much to hobbies and recreation?
And how much time do we deliberately give to prayer, the Word of God, fellowship, serving, witnessing and the things of eternity?
Psalm 90:10 says:
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
That verse ought to make us stop and think.
Seventy years. Perhaps eighty. And then we fly away.
Our days are passing.
The clock is moving.
The calendar is turning.
Christmas will be here before we know it.
And one day, our time on earth will be finished.
That is why Moses prayed:
Psalm 90:12
“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”
Notice that he did not pray, “Lord, give me more days.”
He prayed, “Teach me to number my days.”
The issue is not simply how many days we have, but what we do with the days God has given us.
We cannot slow time down.
We cannot save today and use it tomorrow.
We cannot go backwards and recover yesterday.
But we can surrender today to the Lord.
So let us ask ourselves: What am I doing with the time God has entrusted to me?
May we not waste the precious gift of time. May we use our days wisely, serve faithfully, love deeply, witness boldly and seek the Lord wholeheartedly.
Like David, may we be able to say:
“One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after…”
Because when our time on earth is finally finished, the things that mattered most will not be found in how busy we were, how much we owned, or how much entertainment we enjoyed.
What will matter is whether we used the time God gave us for God’s glory.
Our time is short.
Our opportunity is now.
Our God is eternal.
“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”