Time    

Time of the Mad Atom

This is the age
Of the half-read page.
And the quick hash
And the mad dash.   

The bright night
With the nerves tight
The plane hop
With the brief stop. 

The lamp tan
In short span.
The Big Shot
In a good spot

And the brain strain
The heart pain.
And the cat naps 
Till the spring snaps --

And the fun's done!

Reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, 1949, The Curtis Publishing Co., Courage - You Can Stand Strong in the Face of Fear, Jon Johnston, 1990, SP Publications, p. 143.

Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions... No one can take it from you. It is not something that can be stolen. And no one receives either more or less than you receive. Moreover, you cannot draw on its future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. Its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness -- the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends -- depends on that.

If one cannot arrange that an income of twenty-four hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

Arnold Bennett, Bits & Pieces, March 4, 1993, p. 18-20.

No Time to Play

My precious boy with the golden hair
Came up one day beside my chair
And fell upon his bended knee
And said, �Oh, Mommy, please play with me!�

I said, �Not now, go on and play;
I�ve got so much to do today.�
He smiled through tears in eyes so blue
When I said, �We�ll play when I get through.�

But the chores lasted all through the day
And I never did find time to play.
When supper was over and dishes done,
I was much too tired for my little son.

I tucked him in and kissed his cheek
And watched my angel fall asleep.
As I tossed and turned upon my bed,
Those words kept ringing in my head,

�Not now, son, go on and play,
I�ve got so much to do today.�
I fell asleep and in a minute�s span,
My little boy is a full-grown man.

No toys are there to clutter the floor;
No dirty fingerprints on the door;
No snacks to fix; no tears to dry;
The rooms just echo my lonely sigh.

And now I�ve got the time to play;
But my precious boy is gone away.
I awoke myself with a pitiful scream
And realized it was just a dream

For across the room in his little bed,
Lay my curly-haired boy, the sleepy-head.
My work will wait �til another day
For now I must find some time to play.

Dianna (Mrs. Joe) Neal.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

 Henry David Thoreau.

The great 19th-century naturalist and Harvard professor Louis Agassiz was once approached by the emissary of a learned society and invited to address its members. Agassiz declined the invitation, saying that lectures of this kind took up too much time that should be devoted to research and writing. The man persisted, saying that the society was prepared to pay handsomely for the lecture.

"That's no inducement to me," Agassiz replied, "I can't afford to waste my time making money."

Today in the Word, June 4, 1992.

If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,000 that carried over no balance from day to day...Allowed you to keep no cash in your account, and every evening cancelled whatever part of the amount you failed to use during the day, what would you do? Draw out every cent every day, of course, and use it to your advantage! Well, you have such a bank, and its name is TIME! Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it rules off as lost whatever of this you failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balances, it allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account with you. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow.

Source Unknown.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

Carl Sandburg.

What if you were given $1440.00 at the start of each day to use as you see fit, the only stipulation being that you must give back what you haven't spent by the end of the day?

Source Unknown.

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

Source Unknown.

We master our minutes, or we become slaves to them; we use time, or time uses us.

Source Unknown.

More time is wasted not in hours but in minutes. A bucket with a small hole in the bottom gets just as empty as a bucket that is deliberately kicked over.

Source Unknown.

Common advice given to people who want to improve their use of time is to focus on what contributes most. The inverse, however, is also a worthy pursuit. What does not contribute but only wastes time? Try listing all the "time wasters" in a typical week and then rank them on the basis of their degree of time misuse. Ask questions: "What would happen if I didn't do this? Would it make a significant difference? Can I delegate this?"

Bits and Pieces, May 1990, p. 18.

Parents rate their inability to spend enough time with their children as the greatest threat to the family. In a survey conducted for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Corp., 35 percent pointed to time constraints as the most important reason for the decline in family values. Another 22 percent mentioned a lack of parental discipline. While 63 percent listed family as their greatest source of pleasure, only 44 percent described the quality of family life in America as good or excellent. And only 34 percent expected it to be good or excellent by 1999. Despite their expressed desire for more family time, two-thirds of those surveyed say they would probably accept a job that required more time away from home if it offered higher income or greater prestige.

Moody Monthly, December, 1989, p. 72.

We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end.

Seneca.

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz.

When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept.                                                                                 When as a youth I dreamed and talked, time walked.                                                                           When I became a full grown man, time ran.                                                                                       And later as I older grew, time flew.                                                                                                   Soon I shall find while traveling on, time gone.

Source Unknown.

How often have you talked with someone on the telephone who seemed to be in a hurry and wanted to get on with more important business? Or visited with someone on the street and received that same hurried feeling? You've undoubtedly experienced it...and didn't enjoy it. And, perhaps, you have also been guilty of this. If you have, why not decide to tithe time, save up chunks, bits and pieces of it, and give them away to people who interrupt your pre-established plans?

It is a great principle of love that people don't interrupt, not really. Perhaps there shouldn't even be such a word as interrupt; for when people come into your existence, even for a brief time, that is a wonderful moment of experience for both of you. Relish it. Probe it. Invest some of the time you have tithed. We can't afford to indulge in the luxury of "being too busy and important" for another person.

We have time for such inanimate things as pieces of mail, vast sprawling shopping centers, the television program which starts at 7:30. But what about relationships with people? Isn't that a great deal of what life is all about--loving other people? Remember Jesus? How he raced about, hurrying from one city to another, collecting great crowds on the way to give them a few minutes of hurried heaven-data, then dashing on to the next place?

No, that is not the picture of Jesus the New Testament gives. He had time for people. In a crowd, a woman touched his robe. Lots of people were probably pushing against him, touching his robe, but he discerned the urgency in this particular touch. He stopped, taking valuable time for this "interruption." His disciples were full of fire and computer-like- efficiency. They wanted to get on with the task of getting something done, even if they didn't always know what that "something" was.

Once a bunch of small, grimy-fingered kids came along and wanted to climb on the Master's lap. "Get those kids out of here," thought the goal-oriented disciples.

"No, let them stay. Let's enjoy them and let them enjoy us," thought the true-goal-oriented Man from heaven who knew and expressed the great worth of the individual.

The next time a person "interrupts" you, think not of your work and your deadlines; rather, think of that person's needs, of his covert compliment in desiring to spend a few moments with you. Your meeting may be a significant point in each of your lives, because it is an encounter with another person God has created. you may impart something crucial to his fulfillment--or he to yours.

Paul prayed: "May God, who gives patience, steadiness, and encouragement, help you to live in complete harmony with each other--each with the attitude of Christ toward the other" (Rom. 15:5, TLB). Are you caught up on your time-tithe?

Monte Unger, NAVLOG, January, 1975.

In a lifetime the average American will spend:

Six months sitting at stoplights
Eight months opening junk mail
One year looking for misplaced objects
2 years unsuccessfully returning phone calls
4 years doing housework
5 years waiting in line
6 years eating

Survey of 6000 people polled in 1988, U.S. News and World Report, Jan 30, 1989, p. 81.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin.

I have so much to do today that I shall spend the first 3 hours in prayer.

Martin Luther.

What happened to Time?

• When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept.
• When as a youth I dreamed and talked, time walked.
• When I became a full grown man, time ran.
• And later as I older grew, time flew.
• Soon I shall find while traveling on, time gone.

Source Unknown