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More often than we wish we will ask the question, “What happened to it?”  

We were wearing our glasses just a few minutes ago but now they aren’t on our face and we go looking for them once more. We were sure we had all the ingredients for the recipe we were making for dinner and now discover the basil we always have on hand is nowhere to be found. We know the dentist’s office sent an email reminder to confirm our appointment next week and as we scroll through out inbox it seems to be missing. Did we accidentally delete it when we were trying to clear our inbox that was stuffed with thousands of emails from every office or company we ever did business with?

Many of us lament about how busy our days are and the examples I just shared add to that busyness and frustration. Too often our days are filled with such things as well as the distractions that keep popping up and it all results to fatigue and feeling we can never achieve our daily goals.

We can feel that we are in an endless battle with time and can never win. We may look back over our shoulder at our childhood and wistfully think of how much time we seemed to have. “Back then,” depending on our age, that may have been true. Go back a few decades before technology entered our lives we weren’t bombarded with information on all sides that comes at us now whether it is sought for or not. And make no mistake that information drives us, distracts us, and uses up minutes of every day.

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Some of us start sounding and feeling like victims of all this. Even though there are always unpredictable things popping up in many days, we fail to recognize we are too often victims of our own choices.

“You are today what you chose yesterday. Choice may seem unconscious, but it is never so. Choice is always deliberate.”  Martha Kilpatrick

Our reaction to Martha Kilpatrick’s words can be to object and deny the truth of it because we tend to not take into account that indecision is also a choice. Really?  Yes.

“Choosing can be casual, floating lazily with the tide. Indecision is a decision-to-not-decide and as such…rules. Decision leads us. You choose. You always choose.”  Martha Kilpatrick

I find her words challenging and convicting. I (and perhaps you) so often fail to recognize that every waking moment of our lives we are making a choice or choosing not to make a choice.

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Think about how many you made since you got up today. You chose to respond to your alarm or didn’t. You chose to shower or not and chose to eat breakfast or not. Breakfast was either something healthy or something convenient and tempting. Exercise may or may not have been scheduled and all this was just within the first few minutes of the day. 

When we see these things we sometimes go back to trying to set a better schedule with healthier and less stressful choices. We usually give ourselves a lecture on our need to be more self-disciplined. Both of these can be helpful but are still likely to be sabotaged.

Time is a gift and there is an enemy who longs to steal it and sets up traps to achieve his goals.

“Time is the shining jewel Satan steals. We do not understand its value as much as he does. If he can get your time, he has…you…without God. Your time is your life. So by noble demands and foolish distractions, he ekes away the minutes of your eternity.”  Martha Kilpatrick

What a powerful insight! Time is the gift that once we have used it, we can never get back. None of us know exactly how much we have been allotted in the part of our life we spend on earth. That causes some of us to cram every day full (often of good things) but then we miss the glory of the sunrise, the budding of the trees in spring, the footprints of a rabbit on the lawn, the smile of a child looking at us from a bus window, or a long list of some of the most precious things created.

“Time is the treasure of life. Time IS life. Time is the willing sacrifice that you offer up to the worship of what you love. Don’t tell me what you love. Tell me where you spend your TIME and I’ll tell YOU what you love.  The dispensing of time, the investment of time is the exposure of what you truly love. You give your time to your cherished treasure. You do.”  Martha Kilpatrick

What will you do with the time you have?

(Quotes by Martha Kilpatrick were taken from her book, Adoration: Mary of Bethany, The Untold Story.)

Photo by felix Mittermeier