Tempus fugit

August 15, 2006

By Greg Ebie

Usually I’m the one who works with numbers, but this time my wife, Susie, did some calculating. She figured out if she lives to be 70 she only has 1,404 Saturdays left to live.

Saturday is her one day each week Susie can decide what to do. Yet church activities and other responsibilities were squeezing more and more time out of each of these days. She decided she needed to stop doing some things that filled her Saturdays in order to do some things she really wanted to do.

I thought again how our lives are truly short. I’m looking forward to spending a lifetime with Susie, and yet the time will pass so quickly.

“Tell me, what’s going on, God?

How long do I have to live?

Give me the bad news!

You’ve kept me on pretty short rations;

My life is string too short to be saved” (Psalm 39:4,5, The Message).

Our lives are short no matter how long we may live. None of us knows when the final sands of time will run out. Susie could have more Saturdays than she thinks and live into her 80s; then again, she could have less. Only God knows the number of our days.

All we know for certain is that we have been given today. Someone has said, “Because God gives us today, we call it the present.” No one can relive the past, and the future does not come until tomorrow. All we have is the present; we must choose how we will live today.

Choices we make today affect how we will live our lives tomorrow. If we don’t have time for our children today, they are not likely to have time for us later. If our time is given to accumulate money and things, what will we have gained when our life is over? If we have no time for God then . . .

Well, how would you live differently if instead of thousands you knew you only had 10 more Saturdays to live?

D. Greg Ebie is senior pastor of Praise Assembly of God in Garrettsville, Ohio, and an author of Daily Bread devotionals.