A little while ago I was in my study when our youngest daughter came in to tell me rather excitedly that she was about to go off for her first ever sleepover at a friend's house. She had meticulously packed her little pink bag with wheels the night before in anticipation. It was a monumental day in her small uncomplicated life and so subsequently was almost beside herself with anticipation - but I was busy. very busy, doing very important pastor-like things.
Every few minutes or so she would come in and tell me she was about to go. I said I would be there in a minute to see her off. She must have been down about five times to get my attention. It was beginning to get irritating as I was in the middle of my deepest thoughts and it wasn't as simple as just leaving my desk.
After a while, I noticed the silence. Then it happened, the awful deadening sound of nothing hit me. My heart quickly began to race. I jumped up from my chair and rushed into the hallway and saw that her carefully packed overnight bag by the front door had gone. The family car in the drive had gone too. I was devastated. I felt like the worst father in the whole entire world that had ever been born or will ever be born. My heart broke with shame. That thing to me that was so important just two minutes ago now seemed of no importance whatsoever.
In the Bible there is a famous passage to be found in the book of Ecclesiastes where the writer, King Solomon, wrote that 'there is a time for everything, a season for every activity... A time to laugh, a time to cry.... a time to live and a time to die.'
There is nothing like a missed opportunity to help prioritise what is important to us.
What was so important to me was only important to me, no-one else, not least to my beautiful seven-year-old daughter. I wondered if you have ever had that similar experience. You realise you have spent your time and efforts on the wrong thing and found out too late to do much about it.
Time, I believe, is a gift from God, as is life itself. Every second, every minute, every hour, day, year, is as precious to someone else as it is to you. How we spend time with another person is just as important as the time we spend on a task.
Jesus was often accused by the great and so-called good around him of wasting his time on people who did not matter to society. They thought he should be using his time as a rabbi better doing more religious things. Instead he chose to mix with people such as prostitutes, employees on the take and the social outcasts.
So if Jesus Christ was willing to waste his precious time on seemingly insignificant people and things when he had only three years to do his work, then maybe we can all reflect whether our time can have greater purpose too.
What can seem like a waste of time may actually turn out to be worth more than gold. It may not produce anything tangible, build anything, make us money or get a job, but something special might just start to happen.
When my daughter came home the next day she rushed into to see me with the biggest of hugs and smiles as she told me all about her 'late night'. I put everything down to listen and asked her questions. I then told her in a hushed tone, sitting her on my knee, that I loved her. She put her hand over my mouth, rolled her beautiful green eyes at me and sighed in a very grown up matter-of-fact way, 'Oh Da-ad, I know you do. And I love you too.'
'There is a time for everything'.
ASD
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