Teach us to number our days.
—Psalm 90:12
Frederick Buechner said it takes about one-sixth as long to write Xmas as it does to write Christmas. “If you do your cards by hand,” he said, “it is possible to save as much as seventy-five or eighty minutes a year.”
I’m stumped about how he came up with those numbers—but his conclusion is spot-on: “It is tempting to say that what you do with this time that you save is your own business. However, the Christian position is that there’s no such thing as your own business.”
That’s so, because “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).
So it’s no wonder that Paul told us we should be “making the most of every opportunity” (Eph. 5:16)—variously translated “redeeming the time,” “making the best use of your time.”
Time is a slice of life—a terrible thing to waste.