LOST OR REDEEMED MOMENTS

Dear Flock & Friends,

      With the start of a new year we are forced to reflect on our use of time.  Isaiah 55:6 reminds us to "Seek the LORD while He may be found."  How will you use this time?  For starters it is a good time to begin a systematic reading of the Bible.  We have a schedule in the bulletin  or you can find one on line. 

      Someone said, "In our tranquility how many golden hours we throw down the stream that we are never to see again. The time may come when we would give rivers of oil, the wealth of both Indies, and the mountains of precious stones, if they were ours, to recover one lost moment! Who is there among us that knows how to value time and prize the day at a due rate?"

      Thomas Case wrote, "Most men study rather how to pass away their time than to redeem it. They waste precious hours as if they had more than they could tell what to do with. Our season is short, and we make it shorter. How sad a thing it is to hear men complain, 'O, what shall we do to pass the time?' Alas, even the Lord's day, the purest and most refined part of time, how cheap and common it is in most men's eyes! But O, when trouble comes; when the sword is at the body, the pistol at the breast, the knife at the throat, death at the door, how precious would one of those despised hours be! Evil days cry with a loud voice in our ears: 'Redeem the time!' (Eph 5:16). In life threatening dangers, when God threatens, as it were, then we can think of redeeming the time for prayer, reading, meditation, and study. We then gather up the very fragments of time, that nothing may be lost. Then God teaches the soul the wisdom of redeeming the time."  (TBC 11/17/09)

      Someone compared life to an average day.  Birth is 6 in the morning and the end of a full life is 10 at night for an average span of 70 years.  If you are 25 then it is already 11:40 a.m.…almost noon in other words.  If you are 40 it is past 3 in the afternoon.  If you are 55, it is almost 7 p.m..   If you are 65   it is just 15 minutes until bed time.   Sobering isn’t it.  Let us redeem the time and put our heart into the work God has called us too. 

 

Twice alive,   

Pastor Mark