What Is The Value?

I listen to a certain podcast every morning when I walk.
The podcast is, Truth For Life, with Alistair Begg.
Alistair is the pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio.
Parkside was my son’s church when he clerked in Federal Court after law school.

I learn so much as I listen to the twenty-five minute podcast each day.
Often, I will hear something that I want to write down when I get home.
If it is something short, I can dictate a note in my phone.
If it is something long, I need to find it and listen to it again.

One morning, I heard Alistair ask the question, What is the value?
He was not talking about intrinsic value or worth.
Rather, Alistair gave examples explaining the value of time.
Each example made me think.

The value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade.
The value of one month, ask a mother of a premature baby.
The value of one week, ask an editor of a weekly newspaper.
The value of one day, ask a daily wage laborer with kids to feed.
The value of one hour, ask two people in love who are waiting to meet.
The value of one minute, ask a person who missed the train.
The value of one second, ask a person who just avoided an accident.
The value of one millisecond, ask a person who won a silver Olympic medal.

I was so moved.
The increments of time that we take for granted, are really quite significant.
I was reminded of this during a prayer time with two other women.
One remarked how quickly Christmas is approaching.

Why is it that the older we get, time just seems to fly by so quickly?
She threw that question into the air without really expecting an answer.
The other woman laughed.
Time did not go quickly when I was pregnant, she remembered.

We are all close in age and have had our children.
She remembered how slowly the time went when she carried her three children.
We each reminisced about the anticipation of the first child.
We each remembered that subsequent pregnancies went very quickly because we were so busy.

Alistair’s comments on the value of each increment of time came to my mind.
I retrieved it from my notes on my phone.
I read it again.
Every minute, every second, every millisecond counts.

Time is something God created for us.
God set the seasons in place.
God determined the rising and the setting of the sun.
God is outside of time; He always was, always is, and always will be.

Time is something God created to give boundaries to our days.
We each get twenty-four hours every day.
How we use the time that is given to us really matters.
We can waste the time we have or we can use it wisely for our good and His glory.

Time is often a matter of perspective.
What seems like a long time to one, may seem quite short to another.
If we worshiped a God who was constrained by time, He would not be God.
God is eternal; He is outside of time.

With our feeble minds, we cannot comprehend eternity.
Buzz Lightyear says, to infinity and beyond.
Even Buzz Lightyear does not fully understand the scope of that statement.
What is infinity and how can anything be beyond it?

God did not create time for us so we would fret.
God did not create time so that we would worry if there is enough to do everything we want.
God did not create time to be a hindrance.
God created time because He knew that we could not live with the understanding of eternity.

There had to be Someone to show us.
Jesus, present at creation with His Father, took on human flesh.
Jesus, fully God, stepped into time so that He could show us the way.
Jesus, the immortal, took on mortality.

But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…(Galatians 4:4)

The fullness of time.
Time that was pregnant with meaning until the time had come.
God the Father determined when the time had fully come.
At that precise moment, Jesus was born of the virgin Mary.

What is the value of time?
Time is something God created for us.
Time is something God the Son broke into, on our behalf.
One day, time will be no more.

Only then will we will fully understand its value, as we step into eternity.