What time do you have?
I believe it was Dr. Suess who said, “How did it get so late so soon?”
I don’t know about anyone else, but time just seems to be flying these days.
I suppose it’s the by-product of today’s fast paced and ever increasingly busy lifestyle, but I tell ya, days move quickly and before I know it… it’s Friday!
And look around, it’s fall now, can you believe it!
The thing is, if we are not careful, we will waste the time we have been given.
Carl Sandburg observed wisely, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.”
Arnold Bennett wrote, “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.”
Now there’s a perspective for you and while we consider time let’s remember the scriptures admonition regarding the subject… The Psalmist once said, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
That my friend is good timely advice!
When you are not sure what time it really is…You may waste great opportunities.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.”
Psalm 39 gives us some perspective. In David’s complaint to God, he said, “You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before You.”
He meant that to an eternal God our time on earth is brief. And He doesn’t want us to waste it.
When we do, we throw away one of the most precious commodities He gives us.
Each minute is an irretrievable gift – and unredeemable slice of eternity.
When you are not sure what time it really is…You run the risk of missing appointments.
Dennis Rainey of Family Life Today writes, “A Divine Appointment,” A meeting with another person that has been specifically and unmistakably ordered by God.
Have you ever had a “Divine Appointment”? I have. I sometimes wonder how many of these supernaturally scheduled meetings I’ve missed because I didn’t have my spiritual radar turned on.
The Scriptures say, “The steps of a righteous man are ordered by the Lord.”
And think of this, when you are not sure what time it really is… you have a false sense of security.
The devil and his cohorts were devising plans to get people to reject the Gospel.
“Let’s go to them and say there is no God,” proposed one.
Silence prevailed.
Every devil knew that most people believe in a supreme being. “
Let’s tell them there is no hell, no future punishment for the wicked,” offered another.
That was turned down, because men obviously have consciences, which tell them that sin must be punished.
The concave was going to end in failure when there came a voice from the rear.
“Tell them there is a God, there is a hell and that the Bible is the Word of God. But tell them there is plenty of time to decide the question. Let them ‘neglect’ the Gospel, until it is too late.”
All hell erupted with ghoulish glee, for they knew that if a person procrastinated on Christ, they usually never accept Him.
Thomas Brooks once said, “Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure and pays with pain; 
he promises profit and pays with loss; he promises life and pays with death.”
Time matters but more importantly, the correct time matters much.
Do you have the time?

Tim Throckmorton is the national director of Family Resource Council’s Community Impact Teams.