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.