——— A Message To Christian Women ———
The creation of time was part of the creation account. In that account, we are told (Genesis 1:3-5), that God, seeing the result of his work when He called forth light out of a dark, void, and formless earth, divided the light from the darkness. He called the light day, and darkness night. The account continues that thereafter, there was evening and morning: one day. Thus did God who is Himself eternal, create time.
What is time? It is difficult to give a definition of time, but for our purposes, we will stick with a definition contained in Wikipedia, which is: “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future…”
The key word I would wish us to note is the word ‘irreversible’.
Time has been measured in different ways by different cultures since beyond human memory. Our generation has inherited its measurement by seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. The interesting thing about time is that everyone has been given the same measurement of time in a day. The only thing that is not equal about time is that the amount of time allocated for life’s existence is not the same for everyone, as some die early, others, in what we call mid-life, and still others in the evening of life. Even so, while we live, everyone has the same number of minutes or hours as the next person.
Time respects no one. In a day, we are all given twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, four weeks per month, 365 1/4 days per year, with an extra day for a leap year. This reckoning of time is the same for the richest man/woman you ever heard of, and the poorest person you know; the good person, and the bad; the enterprising and the lazy; the resourceful and the indolent.
We cannot manipulate time, as we do not have control over it. What we do have control over is what we do with the time assigned to us, and the Bible tells us that we are stewards of the time we have at our disposal. That is why we will one day, when time is over, give an account of how we used it. Remember the keyword in the Wikipedia definition of time (supra): “irreversible”, and note that as time is fleeting and passes with each nanosecond, we can never take it back.
It is for this reason that we must take to heart the admonition in Ephesians 5: 15-16: “Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time…”
Remember that once gone, time can never be recovered. You are a steward of the time you have been given. You will give an account of it.
Girl, be wise. Be prudent and use the time!
