Retrospective in Respect to Future Prospects

My how this week has flown by. This year even. I remember several times as a child my dad explaining to me the relative nature of time. Not necessarily the Theory of Relativity, but the fact that a year to a 10 year-old seems longer — as it is 1/10 of his/her life — than a year to a 30 year-old, as it is 1/30 of his.

I’ll be 33 at the end of next month. When I graduated from high school I couldn’t imagine myself in my 30’s. it seemed so incredibly far away, but now high school is a fading memory. Granted, I’m quite thankful for that.

I don’t quite know what it is, but I get nostalgic at this time every year. Perhaps it is that the fall/winter tend to be my favorite time of the year or that my birthday and the holidays are approaching. It might just be that football is back on TV, who knows? Whatever the case, I’ve been thinking back on the paths I’ve traveled while looking forward to those things that are to come and I’ve been confronted again with Paul’s words in Ephesians 5.

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:15-16 NIV

I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a friend on a Friday night, about this time of the year in 1998. We had just pulled up to my parents house, after driving the 45 miles back from Bible College for a weekend home. I don’t remember all the details of the conversation, but I do remember telling Charles, “I don’t want to love my life in such a way that years from now I look back and say, “Oh, I wish I would have ______.”” Admittedly there are a number of things that I look back on and say “I sure wish I wouldn’t have done that,” but frankly, by God’s grace, I’ve yet find a single instance where I find myself thinking, “I sure wish I would have chosen option B over C.

It has been said “Time stops for no man.” I guess in the case of Joshua that wasn’t true, but statistically speaking the odds are in the favor of time. Each of us on the other hand, have a decided end approaching. Wisdom says that we should number our days and make the most of every opportunity. How are you stewarding the precious commodity of time?