Making good use of your time

After my first book was released in 2000 an individual writing a review for amazon.com told people to not waste their money or their time buying the book.  I believe he complained that I was anti-education and that almost anyone could write a better book if they had the time.  The first complaint was wrong, and I think the fact that I just completed my doctorate confirms that I am not anti-education.  I sometimes complain about what many people preparing for the ministry are being taught, but I am committed to life-long education.  The second complaint made me laugh at the time and still brings a chuckle when I think about it.  I assume my critic will not write a better book because he just doesn't have the time to do so.

Long time readers of this blog and of my books know that time management is a frequent theme for me.  It is the number one problem for most bivocational ministers.  We've all felt the squeeze when there is just too much to get done in the amount of time we have.  I struggle with it, most bivocational ministers struggle with it, and my critic seems to struggle with it as well.  I thought about all this when I came across a print out I did a few years ago of a web page I ran across on a business site.  The author of the article was Myers Barnes, and this was written in 2001 for the HousingZone website.  I will just copy a couple of paragraphs from the article.

Einstein understood time management is an oxymoron.  It cannot be managed.  You can't save time, lose time, turn back the hands of time or have more time tomorrow than today.  Time is unemotional, uncontrolled, unencumbered.  It moves forward regardless of circumstances and, in the game of life, creates a level playing field for everyone.  The paradox of time is that we rarely consider that we have enough of it when, in fact, all of it is available to everyone equally.  You and I - along with the rest of the world - start each and every day with the same 24-hours...1,440 minutes...86,400 seconds.

The only difference between being a productive person and a disorganized person is whether or not you grasp - either consciously or subconsciously - that you cannot manage time; you can only control the events within a given timeframe.  You can make use of time...as in riding the train to the station...but even if you choose to stay in the depot, the seconds will continue to click by on timeless tracks.

These words remind me of a phrase one of my professors at Bible school kept telling us: You get done what you spend time doing.  That's true for each of us.  At the end of every day as we lay down to sleep we can look back on our day and realize that we got done the things we spent time working on.

No one, and certainly not bivocational ministers, will accomplish everything there is to do in a day's time.  There will always be another phone call that could have been made, another visit to someone's home that could have been made, some more time spent on Sunday's sermon, or more time spent with the family.  At the end of every day there will always be some unfinished work.  That's why it is so important to set priorities and make sure that we spend time doing the most important things first.

We have all the time God has seen fit to give us.  The challenge for each of us is how we will use that time for the greatest good.