Spending Our Time Wisely

September is nearly here, which means summer is nearly over. Our children head back to school soon. Vacations are over. The days are getting shorter. Football season will soon be upon us.
It hardly even felt like summer this year. We experienced record cool temperatures in July this year. SE Minnesota didn't even hit the upper 80-degree temps until early August. Many of the newspaper editorials called this "The Year Without Summer."
But summer really did come, as it does every year. The months of June, July, and August really happened. Time continues to march along, regardless of the temperatures. For me, it seems the summers fly by anymore! When I was a child, summers seemed to last forever. Each day was packed with fishing, fun, horseback riding, and reading in the shade of our walnut tree.
Now, the weeks seem to rapidly fly by. It is the cost of getting older - and the older we get the more we appreciate the time we have. Ecclesiastes 3 begins with, "There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven." Then it continues with a list of activities that there is a time for - activities like a time for birth and a time for death, a time to plant and a time to harvest.
Time is the most valuable commodity we have. We can always replace anything else we lose. But time cannot be replaced. It continues to march on, despite our best efforts to control it. Some people talk about saving time, but it can't really be saved. If you save money, you can spend it later. You can't save time and use it up later. Each second is here and then gone in a heartbeat.
What we can do is use our time wisely. God has a plan for our lives, and that plan is described as an "abundant life." The best way to use our time wisely is to use it in the way God intended for us to use it. We need to set aside time for direct communication to God every day. We need to spend time in prayer and Bible study to strengthen our relationship with Him and allow Him to prepare us for the next 24 hrs. We need to "pray continuously" throughout the day, following the advice of Jesus in Matthew 6:33 to, "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." Many will say that impractical, that we need to earn money to live on and we need time to take care of personal business. But this verse ends with a promise, "and all these things will be provided for you."
If we constantly seek God's kingdom first and His righteousness, the promise is that God will provide for all our needs. We often lose God's best for us because we try to take control and spend our time "providing and getting," using our own brains and our own muscle. Then, because we are fallible humans, we fail miserably and wind up with sufferings God never intended for us.
God's ways are best. He is omniscient; He knows all things. Let's spend our time wisely and seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness, and I believe we will find that we will gain blessings in our lives that far outweigh our feeble efforts at providing for ourselves!