There are a lot of quotable quotes and references to time in my Bartlett’s Famous Quotations book Some of them are amusing, some are challenging and some just don’t make any sense to me at all. Consider these samplings:
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.” Benjamin Franklin
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes.”
Shakespeare: King Richard II
“Live all you can: it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven’t had that what have you had? …What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that…..The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have…..Live!
Henry James in The Ambassadors (1903)
So why all these references to time? What does it say to us? Many times it just seems that we don’t have enough time at all to do everything that we want to accomplish. For many folks, especially for the elderly, time is all that they have and too much of it as they are not as active as they once were. On one hand there aren’t enough hours in the day and then on the other hand the days drag on for some. Why can’t we hit the happy medium?
One thing that has been a stumbling block for me has been trying to determine what is my timing on things and what is actually God’s timing. I get impatient and think that things need to happen in my timeframe and on my schedule when in actuality it really is not always up to me. Sometimes God has a totally different timeframe in mind and I ignore it. What I am learning is that I need to exercise some of that patience that I talk to my children about and accept that sometimes God’s timing is what I need to be seeking. It all boils down sometimes to the idea that I think that I am wasting time waiting on things —but perhaps in the bigger scheme of things the time I think I am wasting is time well spent because it might be preparing me for something bigger to come.
So I am learning to be patient, to not get all riled up when things don’t seem to go in my preconceived time frame, and to let go and let God determine the timing of things happening in my life. I am living each day to the fullest and challenge you to do the same and take advantage of the time that you may have thought was being wasted but allowing that to be a time to reflect and pray. It seems to be working for me so I hope that it may work for you also.
