September Pastor's Pen

Today - adv. 1. On or during the present day. 2. In the present time or age; nowadays. - n 1. The present day. 2. The present time or period.

YESTERDAY IS A CASHED CHECK; tomorrow is a promissory note. Today is cash in hand so use it- invest it. (John Haggai ; How to Win over Worry.)

TIME IS SIGNIFICANT because it is so rare. It is completely irretrievable. You can never repeat it or relive it. There is no such thing as a literal instant replay. That appears only in films. It travels alongside us every day, yet it has eternity wrapped up in it. Although this is true, time often seems relative, doesn't it? For example, two weeks on a vacation is not at all like two weeks on a diet. Ben Franklin said of time," that is the stuff life is made of". Time forms life's building blocks. The philosopher William Jones once said, "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." (Lloyd Cory, quote Unquote)

    Sometimes when we say to someone, "What time is it?" they will say "three o'clock or "quarter past two." But other times they may say “time to get going" or “time for lunch." For answers like those you don't really need a clock, do you? Or, if you come late to supper or to get into the car to come to church, somebody who has been waiting might just say, "Well, it is about time!" Usually we don't feel very good when they say it then, because they are impatient and have been waiting for us to hurry up and come.

    God is interested in time, just as we are In fact God has told us that we only have a certain amount of time.  After that it will be all gone and it will be too late to do any more of the things we want to do. We wonder how much of the time God will give us. Nobody knows except God. We need to remember that time is a special gift to us from God. When we look at a clock, we could say, "Well, the hands on the clock just keep going around and round so time never really runs out." But we need to be careful not to think like that, because time does run out.  And sometimes the clock will even stop. Then there is no more time.

    God has a lot of time, but we don't. The Bible says "for God, one day and a thousand years are the same thing." But for you and me, the clock is running down. God wants us to use our time carefully. Some day we will get surprised. The clock will stop and we will run out of time to do good things for God. In one way that will be wonderful, because then we can go to live with God. But before that happens, we have a lot of work to do, don't we? Don’t leave this earth without saying I love you, please forgive me for that mistake that was made against someone, and don't forget to say a kind word to someone every day.  Don't gossip against someone. Don't think that the good or the bad goes unnoticed by God. Remember we all have an animal of good on one shoulder and an animal of evil on the other shoulder. Which of them that survives is the animal you feed the most.                                                                                                            

                                  In Christian Faith,

                                             Rev. Walter Coy