Cloyce Sutton Online

Reflections on spiritual themes (and a few other things).

Tag: Time

About a Minute

July 19, 2023 / / 0 Comments

A famous guest at a banquet was asked at the last moment to give an impromptu speech for the occasion. As he rose to speak, he asked how much time he had. Someone from the audience yelled “About a minute!”

The speaker asked, “Only a minute?”

He then said, “We normally think of a minute as a short amount of time. Not as short as a second, but still short. In fact, most of us rarely think about what we can do in one minute’s time. In reality, you can do a lot more than you think. It only takes a minute…

  • “To offer a prayer of thanks to God.
  • “To offer a prayer of intercession for someone who’s hurting or struggling.
  • “To send a text message to someone you missed seeing at church.
  • “To email someone you’ve been thinking about.
  • “To write a card to someone who’s sick or grieving.
  • “To say ‘Thank You’ to someone who blessed you in an unexpected way.
  • “To say ‘Well Done’ to an employee or student or child.
  • “To say ‘I appreciate your work’ to a boss or teacher or pastor or minister.
  • “To pick up and put up something that’s been laying there for a week.
  • “To wipe a spot in the kitchen or bathroom.
  • “To read a short passage of Scripture and give yourself a boost.
  • “To call a friend or church member you haven’t seen in a while.
  • “To make a ‘To Do’ list for tomorrow.
  • “To hug someone who needs a hug.”

And you thought a minute wasn’t much time! 

As the apostle Paul said, “Make the most of your time” (Ephesians 5.16). May God help make the most of our minutes!

Time & Attention

February 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

“Everything that wants your attention doesn’t deserve your time.”

Shavoris Brown

The beginning of the day, the week, the month, or the year seems ripe with opportunities. We manage to convince ourselves that all is possible, and there’s plenty of time to do it all. 

Then reality hits: unplanned interruptions, unwanted calls, unexpected sickness, unwelcome salespersons, unrealistic expectations, unforeseeable delays. You know what I’m talking about.

When these time wreckers intrude on our well-planned schedules, what do we do? We hit the pause button and ask ourselves, “What’s the most important thing I need to do right now?” Our ability to be productive depends upon our ability to determine what’s most important and to pursue that above all else. It’s a matter of eliminating the unnecessary and concentrating on the essential. To extend the opening quotation, some matters are not only unworthy of our time, they’re also unworthy of our attention.

The same mentality applies to spiritual life. Spiritual life can become cluttered and clotted with unnecessary, attention-grabbing distractions. Not a day passes that I don’t get some kind of invitation to attend a religious or church event. Not a day goes by that I don’t get an offer to buy another religious book. Hardly a day passes by that I don’t get asked to participate in another conference, another online study, another elders’ meeting, another mentoring session, or another church social. After a while, my head wants to explode. 

But the biblical solution is simple. Determine what’s most important and forget the rest. While the Bible isn’t a time management manual, it does speak to the issue of our priorities. Consider:

  • Psalm 39.4: “LORD, make me to know my end and what is the extent of my days; let me know how transient I am.”
  • Psalm 90.12: “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.”
  • Ephesians 5.15-16: “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”
  • James 4.14, 15, 17: “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that’… Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.”
  • Matthew 6.33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

For today and every day, determine what deserves you attention and your time, then pursue it with all you’ve got.

The $86,400 Gift Card

September 7, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Imagine getting a special gift card for Christmas. Before you can use it, you must activate it. After you activate it, you must spend the entire balance in 24 hours. It comes preloaded with $86,400. You can’t combine it with other funds to make a larger purchase. You can’t save any for additional purchases tomorrow because the balance goes to $0.00 after 24 hours. You can’t share your card with anyone else, and others can’t share their cards with you. You may spend your funds in any way you desire. 

What would you do with such a gift card? You’d spend it of course! I think most people understand that with gift cards you use it or lose it.

In fact, you DO have something like that. It’s called TIME. Each day has 24 hours, each hour has 60 minutes, and each minute has 60 seconds. That works out to be 86,400 seconds per day. Your daily allotment of time works the same way as your imaginary gift card. You begin each day with the full amount, and at the end of the day, you have nothing leftover. You can’t save any of today’s time to use tomorrow, and you can’t borrow any of tomorrow’s time for today. You can’t give any of your time allotment to other people, and other people can’t give you theirs. You may spend your time in any way your desire.

I’m not sure why it’s the case, but most people I know have a better appreciation for money than they do for time. Perhaps it’s because money is more tangible, or at least the things it will buy are tangible. Time, on the other hand, is more of a concept, and an elusive one at that. Often the things we do with time are intangible, and the benefits are also intangible. 

Regardless of the reason, we would all do well to understand that time is one of our most valuable assets. In many ways, it’s the great equalizer. Not everyone has money or prestige or power. Everyone has time. In fact, everyone has the same amount of time available to them: 86,400 seconds per day. That’s true for me, for you, for the CEO, for the President of the United States, for Moses, and for Jesus himself. The difference isn’t the amount of time we each possess, it’s what we do with the time we possess.

Moses said, “For all our days have declined in Your fury; We have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, Or if due to strength, eighty years, Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; For soon it is gone and we fly away” (Psalm 90.9-10). He was saying that life is a struggle. 

But his conclusion was more hopeful: “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom” (v. 12).

As we begin this year, may God bless each of us with a full year’s worth of time, and an awareness of the value of time, and most of all the wisdom to use it well. 

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