When I was working in student ministry years ago, I would talk to the students once a year about money, usually near the end of the school year and graduation time. I would remind the students that investing while they are young is important, and that if they invested regularly and wisely, they would one day acquire a very healthy financial portfolio. I would also remind them that if they managed to do so, I hoped they would remember me and take me out for a nice dinner as a way of repaying me for the helpful advice. That has yet to happen, unfortunately. I mention this because, as we continue the series of messages from the book of James, we come to a passage in which James speaks about time. It is sometimes said that time is the new currency, and I believe this is true. As people feel more and more pressed for time, it is often easier to get people to give of their money than their time. So, if time is the new currency, I want to speak of time as though it were money, in the sense of how we use the time we have been given.
As we come to today’s passage from James, I will say this at the outset – James doesn’t get any easier on us. James has had some tough words, hasn’t he? But aren’t they also very, very practical words? As I have done in the three previous messages, I am focusing on a portion of the chapter, and in chapter four it is only three verses, so follow along with me as I read James 4:13-15.
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”
14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
Speaking about time as though it were currency, I first want to say that –
1. Both money and time are generally in short supply.
I have sometimes used the following story at funerals and memorial services. When I was in 2ndgrade, I remember coming home one day when it was still early in the school year. When we are young, time moves slowly, and I was feeling discouraged about the length of time before summer break would once again arrive. As I walked into the kitchen, my mom was preparing dinner, and I asked her, will time always move this slowly? I remember her reply as though it was yesterday – the older you get the faster time will pass, and one day you will find yourself wishing that time would slow down. I don’t know when I passed from wishing time would move faster to wishing time would move slower, but I know it was a long time ago. Sometimes, as time moves faster and faster, I feel as though the wall calendar in our kitchen has become a fan, as the pages are turning so quickly!
When James writes Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes, it comes across as discouraging. When I read the words you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes, I think of when a match is struck and then the flame is immediately extinguished. There is a little wisp of smoke that rises and then quickly dissipates. That is the image in my mind as I read James’ words. Yes, it can be discouraging to think of how quickly time passes, but his words can also be quite the motivator, as they remind us of the reality of our limited time and the need to make the best of that time. I remember being asked by a teacher years ago, what would you do with a million dollars? It was impossible for me, at that point in life, to fathom a million dollars, especially the thought that I would one day reach a point where I had earned a million dollars in the course of my lifetime. The teacher went on to say, you will most likely earn a million dollars in your lifetime, but it will come in small increments rather than all at once. So when you say something such as “I would give money to a cause if I had a million dollars,” you will earn that much, so learn to give in small and regular increments, as you should not wait until you have the entire million dollars in hand. I think that was very good advice, and the same can be said for time. If we wait until we have time, we will always believe we have too short a supply to be able to give any away. We must learn, as early as we can, to be careful in how we use our time and to realize that, while it may always seem in short supply, there is still a supply from which we can give.
I should note, also, that one of the differences between time and money is this – we can estimate, fairly accurately, how much money we will need for our living expenses and for our retirement. When we buy a house, we can use a mortgage estimator that helps us to anticipate the cost of that house each month. When we buy a car, we can estimate how much money we will need to pay for the cost of the car each month. We can use a retirement calculator to estimate how much money we will need to have in order to ensure an adequate income throughout retirement. I know there are unexpected expenses and unforeseen expenses that arise, but we can still estimate with some measure of accuracy. With time, however, we do not know how much we have. We can plan out our lives for many years to come, but we do not know if we have those many years. In fact, as James reminds us, we do not know if we have tomorrow, and understanding this reality provides us with a greater sense of the incredible value of the time we are given. So, keeping that in mind, here are a few things to remember –
A. Never assume we have all the time in the world. I have conducted hundreds of funerals over the almost forty years of my ministry. It is increasingly common for me to officiate funerals for people who were younger than me. I have outlived a number of my relatives and friends, which reminds me that I cannot assume or live as though I have unlimited time.
B. If you do not set your time and guard your time, your time will be set for you. Just as with our money, there are always demands upon our time, and there are plenty of forces that will be happy to set your schedule for you. Do not let this happen. Take care not only to guard your time, but to determine how your time will be used. If you do not, someone or something will make that determination for you.
C. Time will always pass more quickly than we anticipate. Parents, for instance, are often reminded of the rapid passage of time through their children, such as on the first day of school, when they get their driver’s license, when they graduate from high school and college, when they get married, and when they have children of their own. Each time we experience one of those milestones, we wonder where has the time gone? And we feel the lump in our throat that reminds us that once time has passed, it is gone forever. Sometimes I wonder how 62 arrived so quickly. I can remember when the idea of being 60-something years old was inconceivable to me, and here I am, in my 60s. Waiting until tomorrow to tell someone what you need to tell them or waiting until tomorrow to do something you need to do is not a good strategy, as tomorrows come and go so quickly.
D. Time is a tremendous gift. It is a beautiful gift. It is a wonderful gift. And it is a very tenuous and fragile gift. Never forget that.
2. Both money and time are investments.
To be honest, I am not one who buys into the idea that we should live each day as if it were our last. I understand the sentiment, of course, but the reality is anything but great, because there are some practicalities that we must take into consideration. If I decided to live today as if it were my last, for instance, you might be sitting there right now wondering, where’s Dave? Why isn’t he here leading worship today? I would not be here because I would be out living today like it were my last! Living each day as if it were my last would mean that I would never get around to mowing the yard, taking out the trash, paying my bills, and would probably never come into the office. While that is an acceptable plan for a short time every now and then – we call those periods of time “vacations” – sooner or later we have to face the reality that we have responsibilities in life and can’t simply wander off and do whatever we want to do. Sooner or later we have responsibilities that must be managed. Again, however, I understand the sentiment of living each day as if it were our last, but it’s really not possible.
That being said, I believe it is important to remember that unlike money, there is never an accounting for how we are doing with our time. If you have an investment fund, you receive a regular accounting of how those investments are performing. You can open the investment report, see gains or losses, and then make adjustments according to how well those investments are doing. We get no such accounting when it comes to the way we use our time. We do not receive an account statement in the mail telling us how well our time investments are doing. We get no report that tells us if we are making good or making poor investment decisions about our time. Imagine, however, if we did receive an annual accounting of how we use our time. What might that balance sheet look like? Would we be pleased with our time investments, or would we feel as though we had invested poorly? It is too easy to continue each day as though our time investments are performing well and bringing good returns. The reality, however, might be that we are squandering our time, and there is no investment report to tell us this. As we think about our time, then, let us ask ourselves, am I making a good investment of my time? Invest your time in ways that will produce dividends – good dividends – and take care not squander it.
3. Both money and time yield dividends, when we invest well.
We say of some people, they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth, signifying that they were born into some measure of wealth and privilege. I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth, not a silver one. My siblings and I did not lack for anything, but we were not at all wealthy, at least not in the way we measure financial wealth. We were a basic, middle of the road, middle class family, although my parents could have had $10 million dollars for all I knew (and if they did, they sure kept it well hidden). Whatever financial investments my parents owned, they made good and important investments in the lives of my siblings and I, and in others as well. My parents invested their faith in us, taking us to church each week, and while there were times when I would have rather stayed home, I am profoundly grateful they invested their faith in us. They also invested their time in our church, where they both served in numerous capacities over the years, and they taught us to invest our own lives in a local church. They invested in our church camp, where my sense of call to ministry was shaped in a very important way.
I walk early in the morning, and walking at that time of day is a great time to pray. A prayer I have offered on more than one occasion – as I did the other day – goes approximately like this –thank you God for my wealth, which is not financial, but is very bounteous in so many other ways. And thank you for not giving me a lot of financial gain, because I think it would be bad for me(full disclosure – I don’t always like thanking God that I do not have a lot of money, because I have wished on many occasions that I did have a great deal of money. I just don’t believe it would do me as much good as I sometimes think that it would, and so I am thankful – although somewhat grudgingly so – that I don’t have a lot of money, and though we don’t always know how God answers our prayers, I can say with assurance that God has answered in a very obvious manner my prayer to not have great wealth). So while I have not been the recipient of large financial windfalls, I have been the recipient of great investments on the part of many other people. And while my portfolio is not one of stocks and bonds, it is one that has nonetheless made me wealthy, and I am content with that portfolio.
To reap investments from our time, we also have to remember to be patient. Time is a great teacher, if we allow it to be. Sometimes, we have to be patient in learning the lessons. Not every problem is solved quickly. Not every answer comes overnight. Not every person responds quickly to our investment to them, just as we did not always respond quickly to the investments that others made in us. Time will, however, bring those investments to fruition, so be patient.
4. Invest well.
Over the years, I have changed the way in which I approach the subject of time in my messages. I realized, some years ago, that when I preached about time, I was haranguing people about how they used their time, and maybe that was because people did not always use their time in ways I believed they should use their time. So I would try to guilt them into different behaviors, which never really works and is not a proper course of action anyway. Here’s what I think is the reality for most people – most people would love to manage their time differently. Many people believe their time is really not their own, as there are so many demands that eat away at it. Work demands a lot of time, and we often feel torn between what it takes to earn a living and spending time with our families. We are involved in church and community activities, and that takes time. We have responsibilities to look after personal business, such as the paying of our bills, taking care of things around the house, getting the car fixed, etc. I think a lot of people would say, I would love to manage my time in a different way, so please don’t make me feel guilty, as I already feel guilty enough! I don’t know that I need to tell you how to invest your time. I think we all already know how we should invest our time. The problem is not knowing how and where to invest our time; it’s finding how to manage a balance in life that allows us to invest our time in the ways we would like.
Like money, when it comes to time there are good and bad ways to invest, and we do not always know the difference at the time. Sometimes, we can only discover the difference between a good and bad investment of time when we are looking back in time, and by then it is too late to change our investment. Time is like money; it is a resource and can be used wisely or it can be squandered, and we must be careful not to squander it.
Last week I spent two days in West Virginia, on a visit to see my mom, who has been in the hospital for the past few weeks. She is in the hospital in Weirton, which is north of my hometown of Wellsburg, by one county. When I left Weirton to come home, I passed through Wellsburg on my way to Wheeling, where I picked up the interstate. As I passed through Wellsburg, I decided to stop at my home church to do my weekly Facebook Live. It was a cold morning, and the breeze blowing off of the Ohio River – just a block away – was colder than I first realized. I did not go in the church, as I was on a tight schedule (yes, I do realize the irony of that statement, as I speak about how we use our time), and recorded the video as I walked around outside of the building. At one point, I looked down at a marble bench that was beside the sidewalk. The bench was not there during my time growing up in the church, and when I looked down at it, I noted the inscription that it was in memory of Betty Wells. You don’t, of course, know Betty Wells, but she was a longtime member of the church, and when I read her name there were the names of many other saints that came flooding back into my memory. I’m not sure that what I said from that moment on in the video made much sense, because my thoughts were very much occupied with those saints who invested so much in my life. Most of them are gone now, and some of them have been gone for many years. Most of them probably did not know the ways in which their investments in my life made a difference to me, and I hoped at that moment that they have learned in eternity what a difference they made to my life. They made many good investments in my life and the lives of many others. They were patient when we did not listen, they were encouraging when we needed encouragement, and they were living examples of faith that many have tried our best to emulate.
Invest your time well. Take a moment and encourage someone. Remember that living out your faith is noticed, and emulated by, others. Be patient when it seems your efforts are not making a difference. The investment of time that you make today can, and will, make a difference that will reverberate through eternity.
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