The Paradox of Time

Well, one news flash in the last six months since I was last here visiting, I became a grandfather. So my wife and I are very excited about having our first grandchild. And for those of you who've experienced that or the birth of your own child, obviously these things make you reflect a little bit on time and all the different things that happen over the course of the passage of time. We'd like to talk a little bit about that today. Time is actually a real paradox when we think about it. We've maybe heard the old saying about time. The days are long, but the years are short. And I think from having children and now kind of entering into the next phase, it's definitely the way it's felt for me to get these days that you think will never end with whatever it is that you're struggling with, and you blink your eyes, and several years have gone by.

And time is that way. It's at one time long and short, very much dependent on what your mindset is towards it and how you're looking at it. Probably another great example of that is attitude towards time as a young person.

A week's time as you're waiting for eighth grade to end so you can get to summer vacation. It seems like it will never end. And then when you go on vacation, no matter how old you are, that week-long vacation or the feast or wherever you're at for a week just seems to speed by, doesn't it? And again, so much of it depends on mindset. Even the Bible shows different views of time. That's where we're going to spend a little bit of time today talking through.

Look at the book of James. It talks about life being like a vapor. Just this short period of time just is there and then it disappears. But at the same time, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, we read in Matthew, says, don't be anxious for tomorrow. Just think about today and the things that we have to do in a given day are enough, and we shouldn't have to worry about it. So how is it that we approach this paradox of time? How is it that we should be thinking about time and dealing with time as Christians? I'd like to look at a couple sides of this and then we'll hone in on what it means for us.

And on the one side of it, the Bible does tell us very clearly to be focused and to be productive in the way that we use our time. If you turn with me to Genesis 2, we'll just take a quick walk through some different sections of the Bible and see what it tells us about time and the way that we use it.

And we see very quickly out of the gate, we don't get very long into the Bible before the Bible talks to us about the fact that as human beings, we're made to be productive. We're supposed to use the time that we have to take the abilities that God has given us, to take the resources and the things that we have around us, and to do something with it. Genesis 2, verse 15, not long after the creation narrative, God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden, and was given a specific assignment.

That is to tend and to keep it. So the time that Adam and Eve after that were given was meant to be focused on doing, not just being there, not just sitting back and enjoying everything that was created, that was certainly a part of it, but also to do, to put their hands to something, to tend, and to keep that garden. If you'll turn with me to Exodus 20, the same concept is revisited again, even in the Ten Commandments.

We're here keeping the Sabbath. We read, of course, in Exodus 20, verses 8 and 9, the command about the Sabbath, and it tells us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. But what does it append to that? In verse 9, six days you shall labor and do your work. So again, God, in the Ten Commandments, laid out specifically how it is that we're supposed to use time, setting the Sabbath aside for mankind as a time that's holy, as a time we're supposed to rest, but then adding on to that and saying those other six days are there for you to accomplish something, to take the abilities that you have, to take the strength that you have, to take the resources that God has blessed us with, and doing our work.

We're supposed to use that time to do something to accomplish something. Let's walk forward a little farther in the Bible to Proverbs. We spent a lot of time in Proverbs during the sermonette. Let's read Proverbs 6 verses 6 through 11. You can probably already think about a few Proverbs that talk about time, our efforts, how it is that we're supposed to use our time. This one talking about creation, some of God's creation, and the lessons that it holds for us.

Proverbs 6 starting in verse 6. Proverbs says, go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways and be wise. It has no commander, no overseer, no ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and it gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? Is it going to be too much effort to go to the door and answer it when DoorDash comes to deliver your chicken?

A little sleep in verse 10, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man. So again, on the concept of time, how it is that we're supposed to use it, to not be lazy, but again to take the efforts, to take the mind and the abilities that God has given us and put them to use.

We'll go to one more scripture as we walk through the Bible on this topic. We'll turn to 2 Thessalonians 3. 2 Thessalonians 3, tongue twister there, starting in verse 10.

Here Paul writes to the Thessalonians in verse 10 of 2 Thessalonians 3, Even when we were with you, we commanded you this, If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such, we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread. So clearly we understand that there are people who are no longer able-bodied, whether it's because of age or injury or other things, and this verse is not talking to those people. It is talking to people who are able to do that and telling them that they're supposed to use their time in order to earn a living, to generate something that will support themselves and their families. And so as we look at this first concept of how it is that we're supposed to use time, it's clear that the Bible lays out for us on the one hand that it's important for us to work, to be diligent, to use the things that God has given us, the time, the energy, the resources, the abilities that we have, to create, to do, to build. And that's something that's really woven within us as human beings, isn't it? But that's not the only thing that's there in terms of how it is that we're supposed to use our time. Otherwise, this would be a really short sermon. God views time very differently than we do, and it's in a very multifaceted way. Have we thought about that? The paradoxes and how it is that God views time. Let's turn to Psalm 90, and we'll read a little bit about this. Psalm 90. Peter echoes this same theme. I think it's in 2 Peter 3. We'll read here in the Psalms. Psalm 90, starting with verse 4.

Here, the psalmist writes, a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it's passed, and like a watch in the night. You carry them away like a flood. They're like sleep. In the morning, they're like grass which grows up. In the morning, it flourishes and grows up. In the evening, it cuts down, and it withers. What this verse is really pointing out is how differently God looks at the passage of time than we do. Because we know God lives outside of time. Time is a physical constraint. God is not constrained by physical things. He lives above those things. What we read in this verse and understand is the fact that eons of time go by, and to God, it's just like a blink. So we think, how many of us have any conscious memory of any of our eight great grandparents? Would you recognize a picture of one of your great-grandparents and be able to name that great-grandparent? It's relatively rare in this day and age, and when you think about the span of time as it goes back, it's not really that far back compared to a thousand years being talked about here. And so our memories in terms of time are really bound within a very tight timeframe. I was thinking about this a little bit and just trying to think back of how far back can I consciously remember things? And then how far back can I be connected to other historical events going back through things that people told me? And probably the two oldest things I can think of is I can remember my dad at one point who was born in 1926 telling me that he had seen Civil War veterans marching in a parade. Okay, so I can connect through his memory to the Civil War in the mid-1800s, and probably the next closest thing that I can think of would be talking to my grandfather, who was born in Germany in the early 1900s, telling me about memories of seeing the Kaiser marching again in a parade. I don't know what it is about my memory in parades, but maybe it's some sort of hook there. So, you know, we're talking about things that are maybe certainly less than 200 years back. And if we think about it through anything that we're connected to, it's probably very difficult to reach back very far. I think about just as I've reflected on my own life going back as well, I was born in 1966, and when I was growing up, it was sort of a given that anybody who was like the age I am now in the 50s or so was in World War II. And World War II was somehow this present memory that was there, but as a young person felt very distant. And I started thinking about that. World War II ended 21 years after I was born. Now, for many of us, we remember 9-11. 9-11 was longer from today than World War II was from the time at least when I was born in 1966. Add your own birth date to that, and just start thinking that perspective of time and how far back things can seem when you're young compared to how far back they seem when you're quite a bit older. And then we think about how God views time. He looks at a passage of a thousand years going by, and for him, it's like it was just a moment ago because he's living entirely outside of that constraint. So recognizing those things, what is it that we're supposed to do as we approach the thought of time? I'd like to start with the story of Mary and Martha. I don't know if it's anything that we've ever associated with use of time, but let's read that in Luke 10, verses 38-42.

Luke 10, verses 38-42. It's a parable that Jesus taught, or actually a story of an actual event that happened with Jesus, and some of his good friends. We remember Lazarus, perhaps, who died and was resurrected by Jesus Christ. Mary and Martha were the sisters of Lazarus, people that he was very close with. In Luke 10, verse 38, it happened as Jesus and the disciples went that he entered a village, and a certain woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet, and he heard his word, and heard his word. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and as she approached him, she said, Lord, you don't care that my sister has left me to serve alone. Tell her to come and help me. And Jesus answered her and said, Martha, Martha, you're worried and you're troubled about many things, but one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part which will not be taken away from her. So what is it that happened here? Was Mary sinning?

Martha was concerned because she was doing all the work, but was Mary doing anything wrong? Was Martha, in that sense, doing anything wrong in terms of what she chose to do? They both made a choice in terms of what they were going to do with their time while Jesus was in their home. And it was a very different choice. Martha was focused on the task. I would have to say that just with my mindset, I would have been with Martha. I don't like it when I feel like something needs to get done and other people aren't pulling their weight, and that's what she was focused on. But Mary was there, and she read the moment in a different way. She realized something about Jesus Christ, what he had to teach, the uniqueness of that moment in time, and what she should do with that time. And she made a choice of her priorities, whether she was going to do what the social obligations that might have been needed there in terms of preparing food, or she was going to take advantage of that moment in time when Jesus Christ was there and to be able to sit at his feet and interact face-to-face with Jesus Christ in a very personal way. And we think about it over the course of time in a way that very few people who've ever lived have been able to do. You know, if you think about that now and you told somebody, I could give you the opportunity to spend five minutes sitting down over a bite to eat with Jesus Christ and just hearing him speak and exchanging stories with him, what would you give for that? It'd be an interesting thing. Would you give up washing the dishes and preparing food to do that?

Chances are the answer is yes. So Jesus was teaching here that there's something more to consider about the use of our time than the tasks that are immediately in front of us. Notwithstanding everything that we read from the beginning to the end of the Bible about how we're supposed to use our time productively, how we're supposed to do things, accomplish things, use the talents and the gifts that God has given us, there are additional things that we need to think about in how we use our time and how we prioritize that time. Essentially, Jesus was expanding on the use of time and the fact that it's not just about being busy and being productive. There's a necessity to recognize importance in the things that we allocate our time for and in enduring importance, not just what seems to be important at the moment. So I might talk about that as sorting out between what's urgent and what's really important because there are always urgent things that come at us, but not at all of them are as important as they might seem when they first come.

Let's look at a parable of Jesus Christ. We'll go a few chapters later in Luke and we'll start in Luke 14. Luke 14 verse 16 is where we'll start, and this is called the parable of the great banquet.

Might sound familiar to you as we start reading into it, the parable of the great banquet.

We're not going to take apart all the different parts of the parable and what it was that Jesus Christ was saying at this point in time, but it very much attacks this very same theme that we're talking about. Verse 16 of Luke 14, Jesus said to him, a certain man gave a supper and he invited many people, and he sent his servant at supper time to come to say to those who were invited, come, for all things are now ready. But they all with one accord began to make excuses.

The first said to him, I bought a piece of ground, I have to go see it. I asked to have me excused. Another one said, I bought five yoke of oxen, and I'm going to test them. I ask you to have me excused. Still another said, I've married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. So that servant came and reported these things to his master. And then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, go quickly out into the streets and into the lanes of the city and bring in here the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind. And the servant said, master, it's done as you commanded, and still there's room. And then the master said to his servant, go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper. So large meanings here about the kingdom and how people respond to God and his calling. The thing I want to focus on, though, is if we look up in the early verses here about the excuses starting in verse 19 and what the people had to say, did any of them put forward anything that was a wrong action?

To have bought oxen, to plow a field, to have new property that hadn't been assessed yet, to have just gotten married and want to spend time with a wife. None of these things were wrong.

None of these things were wrong at all. And in fact, if you want to look at something interesting, if you go to Deuteronomy 20 verses 5 through 7, we're not going to turn there today, but some of these things were considered in Old Testament law to be legitimate reasons for avoiding military service. You might remember it lays it out there in Deuteronomy 20, going to serve in the military, those who have just been married, they were excused. Go home. Spend your first year with your wife, starting your family, having that time together. There was even talk in Deuteronomy 20 if you've just bought a vineyard. Your excuse from military service, go plant your vineyard. It shouldn't sit there for somebody else to take the fruit from that vineyard. So not only were these legitimate excuses and activities, but under parts of Mosaic law, these things would have been an excuse even for getting out of military service. But what's being pointed out here in the parable again was that people weren't recognizing what it was they were being given the opportunity to do, and they were putting day-to-day things, priorities, things that they'd put on their to-do list, and they were putting them in front of something that was more important. And so again, it's a need to recognize, to be able to discern between what's urgent, it seems like it just has to be done because I've made it up in my head that I've got to do it, and what's truly important from an enduring point of view. So there are priorities that go above and beyond being productive in the tasks that we have at hand, and I think the biggest thing that we need to learn and to understand and develop in terms of discernment as Christians is how to tell the difference between those things.

And let's face it, at least in the Christian culture, if we use that term broadly in Western society, there is this kind of view of idle hands are the devil's workshop, right? If I'm a really busy, that means I'm a very diligent and productive person, and somehow we cram together these ideas of being busy, not having time to do other things, maybe not having time to laugh or have fun sometimes, and just having a life that's full head down, nose to the grindstone, cranking things out, the quantity of activity being somehow related to the level of spiritual maturity.

And that's the thing I think we need to test out and understand as we consider, again, this paradox of time, simply being busy is not what being a Christian is all about. There's a lot of discernment, measurement, figuring out what to do with the time we're given in order to use it in the most productive and in the most godly way. So given this paradox, knowing that we're to do, to accomplish, to work, but knowing at the same time that we've got to do more than that, we've got to figure out what the most productive way is to use our time from moment to moment, from day to day.

What is it that we should do? How do we remain focused on what's most important?

I'd like to turn next to Ephesians 5 verses 15 and 16. Now, this is a scripture we've probably all heard, and we've probably heard it a lot, again, in terms of make sure you don't waste time as a Christian. God doesn't want you to waste a moment of time, as we need to think about it that way. And I'd like to take this scripture apart in a little more detail and understand more about what it's telling us to do in terms of how we use our time. Ephesians 5, we'll read verses 15 and 16, reading here from the New King James Version. Ephesians 5, 15 says, See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Now, again, this is a scripture that's often used to stand for the proposition that we need to be hardworking and productive and just really focused on taking every bit of our time and cramming things to do into that time and making sure that we're being busy in everything that we do as Christians. But there's more here than first meets the eye.

And when we put together what we see, whether it's the parable of the feast or whether it's Jesus Christ as he was speaking with Mary and Martha, all of this comes together and I think lays out what it is and how it is that we're supposed to be looking at the way that we use our time. Now, the word for time is an important one to think of. We've probably all heard this, the Greek word kronos for time. It's where we get words like chronographic, chronograph, a stopwatch, right? Chronological order. Think about putting things in order of time. That's actually not the word that's used for time in this passage. It's an entirely different word for time. The word used in this passage for time is word kairos in Greek. K-a-i-r-o-s is how it's translated, literated into English, and it does not refer to chronological time. We see the word kairos. It's not talking about a specific date or a specific time of day. It has a broader meaning, a more conceptual meaning, a less concrete meaning, and it focuses on a measure or span of time, a moment, a moment of opportunity, for example. Let's look at a few examples of how this word kairos is used in a few other parts of the Bible. One is in John 7 verse 8.

Here, Jesus's brothers are asking him to reveal himself. At this point in time, his brothers weren't really fully believing who he was. They were asking him to reveal himself. And what did he say? This was before the Feast of Tabernacles, John 7 verse 8. He says, you go up to this feast, I am not yet going up to this feast, for my time has not fully come. So he was not saying, it's not yet the 4th of October at four in the afternoon, so I can't do this. He was saying, my time has not come. He's saying the situation is not right. The moment has not been fully prepared. So we're thinking here about time in a more conceptual sense, not focused on a specific time of day or a span of minutes or hours. Let's turn to Romans 8, 18. Romans 8, verse 18. Again, the same word being used. Let's see how it comes through in this verse. Romans 8, verse 18. Paul, writing about the sufferings of Christians in this life and the things that we go through. He says that, I consider the sufferings of this present time, word kairos, again used here, are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed to us. So again, when he's saying this present time, he wasn't talking about the day or the evening that he was writing this passage. He was talking about our time as human beings on the earth. He was saying that the sufferings that we have during our time as humans, the things that we go through, the trials that we go through in this moment that we live as human beings, which to God, again, is even less than the blink of an eye, is not to be compared with the glory that's going to be revealed with us in us. And so again, talking more broadly about a span of time, a moment of opportunity, a window, or space in time. Lastly, let's look at Galatians 6, another usage by Paul.

Galatians 6, and how he used the same word in another context. Galatians 6, verse 10, hear the word, kairos, is translated. Instead of being translated, time, it's translated as opportunity for the very reasons that we just talked about. Galatians 6, 10, Paul writes, therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who have the household of faith. So again, the word kairos, which in other places is rendered as time, you could put that word in here there and saying, therefore, as we have time, let us do good to all.

But again, it's not talking about, you know, when you have three hours, see if you've got time to mow somebody's lawn and do good for them. It's saying, as the opportunity presents itself, when you're in a moment in time and you see that somebody needs help, when you encounter a situation and somebody needs an ear, somebody needs tangible help in another way, do good, especially to those of the household of faith. So it's talking about seizing those moments or those opportunities as they happen, not about chronological, specific, definable spans of time.

So bearing that in mind, let's turn back to Ephesians 5. I'll just read it from one other translation, God's Word translation, and there are other translations that read very similarly for the same reason that we've just been talking about for the last few minutes. Ephesians 5.15 in the God's Word translation says, so then be very careful how you live. Don't live like foolish people, but like wise people. Make the most of your opportunities because these are evil days.

So rather than saying, redeem the time, it says, make the most of your opportunities, because again, it recognizes the fact that time here is not being talked about in terms of how productive you are with a certain number of hours in a day. It's talking about how we meet these moments of need, these opportunities to do good for others that come in our lives. That takes me very much back to that story of Mary and Martha and how it was that Mary and Martha used that opportunity, that moment, when Jesus was in their house, and what they focused on in that short moment as it exists and how they took advantage of that opportunity.

Now, redeem is also an interesting word in this passage. We're told to redeem the opportunities or the time that we have. That word is used only four times in the New Testament. It's used always in each of those times. It's translated as redeemed, and it's used a couple times in Galatians, for example, where Paul talks about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and how that's used to redeem sinners from the curse of the law. So it talks about buying back. Redeem is essentially talking about buying back, which is what redemption is. And so what we come back to, then, is the idea that we need to take these moments of opportunities, and we need to buy them up.

Every use of time in our lives is an exchange, isn't it? I think of it as a transaction. If we go back again to Mary and Martha, there was something that had to be bought and sold in that interaction, and the two of them made a different choice, right? The one said, I need to take my time, and I need to allocate it to preparing food, preparing dishes, making sure I'm a good hostess, and setting those things out on the table.

The other said, you know, I realize that there are these social obligations, but there's something so much more important that's happening in this moment. I'm going to sell those things. I'm going to set those things aside, regardless of the consequences that might come socially, and I'm going to sit down at Jesus Christ's feet, because that's the moment that I need to buy. I need to redeem that opportunity. I need to buy up that opportunity, and I need to give something up in order to do it. And so the question that I have for all of us is, how is it that we recognize those opportunities?

Are we looking and assessing the opportunities as we come across them from day to day, from week to week, in different seasons of our life? These things look very different for us in the different parts of our lives as we are young or old, but how is it that we evaluate them, and what the suitable actions are to be taken, and what is it that we're willing to give in terms of value to make the appropriate use of it?

You know, buying and selling is such a fundamental thing. It comes up everywhere. I haven't counted it up, but I've read accounts that say that Jesus Christ uses financial analogies, maybe more than he uses any other analogies within the Bible. There's so much written because buying and selling is an age-old thing.

You know, recently we had Sam Bankman Freed, right? Probably a name many of us are acquainted with, with the FTX collapse. He swindled allegedly people out of billions of dollars with his cryptocurrency exchange. And how did he get his start? He got his start buying and selling, like many people do. He took advantage of something that was called the Kimchi premium. I don't know if anyone's heard of the Kimchi premium. Kimchi is a Korean food that's made from cabbage, and some of the traders early on in the days of cryptocurrency realized that there was a greater demand for cryptocurrency in Asia, specifically on the Korean exchanges.

And so these traders would go and they would buy cryptocurrency on other exchanges where they could get it less expensively, and they would sell it on a Korean exchange where people were willing to pay a premium. And they would pocket the difference. That's how Sam Bankman Freed, you can look him up on Google, that's how he got his start and how he early on made a lot of money.

He did what people have been doing throughout the ages. We've read stories of Marco Polo, right? We probably heard the fact that the Chinese invented pasta, and Marco Polo actually brought pasta back to Italy, where it became the national dish of Italy. And there was this incredible trade that went on for centuries between Europe and Asia, because each of them had things that the others didn't.

And you could take normal day-to-day goods in Asia, and if you were willing to take the time and the expense and risk the, you know, loss of everything, risk life and limb, and go across the Silk Road, you could buy up spices, pasta, all kinds of crazy things, porcelains out in the east, transport them to Europe, and you could sell them for multiple of what you'd bought them for.

People do this all day long. There's one parable I can think of about this as the Pearl of Great Price. What's the Pearl of Great Price talking about? There was a trader, a merchant, who bought and sold pearls, and he found a Pearl of Great Price. And what did he do? He sold all that he had, and he did it for a reason, because he found a pearl that was so incredibly worth so much, others didn't realize the worth of it, and he was able to buy it and get a good deal on it.

What's underlying that is the idea that he was going to go, and he was going to sell it for a lot.

And that was a parable that was about the truth, right? The fact that we should be willing, when we see the truth, we understand its value, to give up a great deal for it. This whole idea of an exchange, right? What is it that we're buying? What is it that we're selling is inherent in so much of what we do as human beings, and also in the things that Jesus Christ brought out.

So when we come back here to the idea of time, redeeming the time, making the most of opportunities and moments, what is it in our lives that we're buying, and what is it that we're selling?

And think about it in the context of what we heard in the sermonette as well. Self-control is so much about how we allocate our time and what we do with it, how we spend it.

Let's just look at a few ways this can look. And I'm not going to go super deep in it, because my goal here really is to spur some thought that all of us will do over the course of the week here, as we consider the moments and the opportunities that we have. But how about our personal and our family lives, how we organize our day? Again, a lot of this depends on the phase of life that we're in, family responsibilities that we have, and so forth. I'll share an example from my life. When my children were small, I had a demanding job. I would often have to work 12, even 13-hour days.

And so I looked at my schedule, and I made some decisions in my schedule, and it was not unusual.

Most days of the week, I would start working at 6.30 or 7 in the morning. And I did that so that I could be home for dinner with my family and have that time, which to me was important. And I at least had the wisdom at that point in time to realize it was going to be a short window of time that I had to spend with my family over those years. And so that was a decision that I made personally that I could do. I would give up some sleep. I would give up activities, perhaps, in the evening in order to be able to get up early, get into work, and be home to have time with the family. We probably all had seen young people get married, right? And how many of us have said to friends after we've seen a young person get married, or maybe one of our buddies get married, you know, he's really going to have to give up that hobby, or he's not going to stay married, right? Or she's going to have to give up hanging out with all those friends all the time or talking with them for three hours a night on the phone because her husband's just not going to put up with it. It's not going to be a happy marriage. It's the same thing, right? We're exchanging time. We're looking at what it is that we're in in terms of the situation, in this case, newly married. And when people are newly married, they're both dynamically making decisions about how they're going to use their time so they can come together as husband and wife and build something new together.

It's a buying and a selling. It's a giving up of certain things that one individual wants to do in order to buy that time together, to create a new relationship, and to build something even more important than what's being given up, something much more valuable. We act this out every week as we come to services. I think about our congregation back home. We started back to services a few weeks, maybe a couple months after COVID started, back in 2020. And life was pretty convenient at that point in time on the Sabbath. I'm used to 45 to 50-minute commutes to services. And I can tell you, the Sabbath got, in some ways, a lot more relaxing where I could just turn on the TV and fire up the computer five or ten minutes before services.

Sit there, maybe I'd have a nice shirt on, still have my sweatpants on.

Sit back on the couch and enjoy services, chat with people for a few minutes afterwards, and then switch it off. But we make a decision how we're using our time every week when we show up here live and decide, you know, and I just talked to someone last week at services. Somebody had gone through some very difficult things in her life recently. I remember I was sitting across the snack table with her after services, and she said, you know, I almost didn't show up today.

And then I realized it's important for me to be here. The best thing I can do is to be here with everybody. And I'm really glad I just forced myself a little bit and made myself come out here.

Because it would have been really easy to stay home. And if I'd stayed home, it would probably been even easier to stay home the week after. And she was expressing exactly this thing. She assessed that moment on the Sabbath, the difficulties that she was going through, the opportunity that she had to be at services to be encouraged to potentially encourage others to give a story that could be used in the sermon the following week. And she decided to take advantage, and she bought that opportunity, that moment, to be there at services. And she gave up some convenience, maybe some, you know, physical convenience of just sitting at home and relaxing and tuning in over the internet. We encounter this in relationships with others. There are a couple of doctors, Drs. John and Julie Gottman of the Gottman Institute. And they refer to something that's called bids for connection. Perhaps some of you have heard about this. And their entire psychological theory and relationship theory is that people want attention, but they don't want to ask for it overtly. And so in other ways, we all as individuals make bids for attention.

Whether it's sharing stories about the day, whether it's pointing out something out the window, whether it's going on social media and posting a link, and then you go back and you want to see how many people looked at this or liked it, right? These are all bids for attention that people want, and they want that feedback from other people.

Every time one of those bids for connection comes from somebody else, how is it that we react? If we think about it, we can probably identify some of them. I know with my wife, we live, we've got a little bit of open area behind our house, and sometimes deer will come through, or a raccoon will come wandering across the yard. We had a skunk come across one or two times, and we'll look out the window, or she will, and just say, come here, come here, come here, there's an animal outside, right?

That's a bid for attention. That's a way to relate, right? To say, come look at something, or something I think is important and interesting, I want you to come look. And I've got a decision to make at that point in time. Maybe I'm at home working and say, yeah, deer, I've seen a hundred of those in the last three days.

I don't care. Now, what have I said, subconsciously, in reacting to a bid for attention like that? I've said, you think that's important. I don't really think it's important. I've got better things to do right now, so leave me alone. Or I can react and say, yeah, wow, look at that big deer. Because, again, I've made a decision about what's important in that moment in time. Is it to recognize and relate to my spouse, or is it to say, not important, I've got other things to focus on?

Types of decisions we need to make all the time in our lives. I'll share one other story on myself that's maybe not too great, but I fly a fair amount, at least I did back before COVID. I'm one of these people on airplanes. How many people like to talk to people on airplanes? Okay, you probably would not like sitting next to me.

Because my mode when I get on an airplane is, I just want to be left alone. I sit down in my seat. At most, I will say hello to the person next to me, and then I'll pull out something I have to read. I'll close my eyes and want to rest and just sort of unplug. That's just, that's me on airplanes. And that's because I'm a bit of an extrovert or introverted accountant.

We accountants are known for not being great at relating to people. It goes so far, actually, just as the last time I was at a face-to-face meeting with some colleagues from work, we were actually talking about this. And there was a 30-minute conversation between about six of us, and it all revolved around ways that we found to ignore people on airplanes when they wanted to be too chatty.

Okay, so I'm not telling you this because this is maybe the best quality in the world. But, you know, it's something that as we think about bids for attention, as we think about noticing moments, I can be oblivious to those things and very willfully oblivious because they're elements of my own convenience and how I want to spend my time that bubble up to the top and not always in a good way. It's going to be different for every one of us. We have to assess that. We have to think about what is it for us? What is it that we're buying and selling? How is it that we're allocating our time?

And why? How are we taking advantage of the moments in our lives? And are we recognizing the important moments in our lives? It takes reflection. It takes time sorting through what we prioritize in life, what we believe is important, and we act out those priorities then in how we allocate our time and how it is that we react to the situations as we come along. That's as deep as I'm going to go into this topic because my goal today is really to prompt some thought in everyone's minds, to encourage everyone to think about time.

Are you buying back the opportunities? Are you recognizing the moments? Where do we sit on this spectrum and how is it that we determine that we're going to evaluate our time? So for those who want to think a little bit more about this and want a homework assignment or two, one would read the rest of Ephesians 5. We read just the short couple of verses about redeeming the time or redeeming buying back the opportunities. Read the rest of that chapter. You know, what I find interesting is that you know what comes at the end of Ephesians 5 for those of us who are married is everything about how husbands and wives relate to each other. I find it instructive that after this idea of how it is that we use the moments and the opportunities in our lives, there's a number of things going on in verses 15 through 21 that would be good to look at, and then comes discussion about husbands and wives because this is very relevant to us in our marriage relationships as well as all the other relationships. The other thing I encourage everyone to do is consider how this should look in your life. I've tried to lay out a few scenarios, a few stories, things that I've experienced and thought about, but what is your season or situation that you're in in life right now? What opportunities do you have? What opportunities present themselves in your life that perhaps you need to take advantage of or buy back in a way differently than you've historically been doing? Which of those opportunities need to be bought up and what needs to be sold, done away with, pushed away, pushed lower on the priority list in order to do it? Those are questions I'd encourage everyone to sit back and give a little bit of thought to. So in conclusion, time is a paradox. God wants us to be productive with our time. He wants us to use it in doing and accomplishing and we were created to work and diligence in our lives is without a doubt a Christian virtue. However, at the same time it's clear that God views time differently than we do and we have to avoid the pitfall of simply considering busyness to be next to godliness.

We have to make an ongoing real-time evaluation of how it is that we spend our time so that we can recognize and buy back the opportunities and the moments that have real weight as they go by in our lives. May we all effectively redeem the time?