I Don’t Have Time (Or Do You?)

This post is written to link with Five Minute Friday: write for five minutes on a one-word prompt. The prompt today is “time.”

“I’d like to, but I don’t have time…”

I hear people say it all the time, and sometimes I even say it myself, but when you stop and think about it, it’s not actually true.

We do have time. We all have time. We don’t know how much of it we have, but for each day we live on this planet, we each have 24 hours (or 1440 minutes, which somehow makes it sound like more.) The question is how we use it.

When we say we don’t have time, what we’re really saying is we are choosing to spend that time elsewhere.

And that’s ok. We have time, but it is limited, so there are decisions that have to be made. I certainly don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do, and each of us has specific responsibilities where our time is already committed – to a job, to caring for a child or a parent, to following through on important commitments we’ve already made.

It’s worth stopping to consider though how we are using our time – recognising that we have choices to make and seeking to choose well. If time is such a valuable commodity, doesn’t it make sense to try to spend it well?

Because time is spent. It’s not something we can hoard or save for a rainy day. Every day – all 24 hours, all 1440 minutes of it, is used up.

We can squander it on scrolling through social media for hours, or we can invest it wisely in activities that are going to build us up and encourage others – praying, reading God’s Word, taking time to talk with others and to listen, doing some exercise, cooking a healthy meal… so many options.

It’s a challenge to consider how we use our time, and it’s a challenge I want to take seriously this year.

When we finally emerge from the disruption to our daily activities that we’ve experienced over the last ten months, and we resume some kind of normal pattern of life, I’d like it to be a better normal, where I consider how I use my time and seek to use it well.

I may not have time for all I want to do, but I will have time for all God wants me to do if I don’t get distracted and waste it on other things.

Our choices may seem small, but they all add up – hopefully to a life well-lived.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.” (Annie Dillard)