By means of God’s common grace every person who has ever lived, regenerate and unregenerate alike, has been apportioned a certain measure of time on this earth. Ideally, it is to be used in service to the One who gifted that time to us to begin with. Unfortunately, however, not everyone appreciates this, including Christians. As the Puritan missionary David Brainerd, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 29 said, regrettably, “Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose.”

“The present is the only time in which any duty may be done or grace received.”
– C.S. Lewis

A primary role of the church, and of the gospel upon which is founded, is to prepare its people for eternity. Or, to put it more plainly, to prepare them to die. And yet death and eternity are arguably subjects that the church seems to avoid addressing more than almost any others.

Come to think of it, when was the last time you heard a sermon that dealt with the brevity of life or the finitude of your mortality?

Exactly.

Time is a reality for each of us, both in this life and in the next. From the moment you and I are conceived in our mother’s womb, the providential clocks of our earthly and eternal existence start ticking. The former is to someday come to an end, whereas the latter will never cease to be.

“When you kill time, remember that it has no resurrection.” – A.W. Tozer

There is perhaps no greater sense in which the finitude of time is more evident to us than in situations involving human life and death. The ardor and exuberance we feel when a child is born into the world, fallen though it may be, is offset by the soberness of knowing that one day he or she will depart from it. Such experiences are reminders to us that indeed “time waits for no one” (as the saying goes).

Scripture has much to say on the subject of time and how we, as believers in the God who transcends time, are to make the most of it for His kingdom (Eph. 5:15-16). The very first verse in the Bible is a reference to a point in time in that, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1).”

It is the degree to which we view time as God does that ultimately determines what we choose to do with the time He has given us (Ps. 90:12).

This is important to note because, for the Christian anyway, the concept of time is first theological then chronological. Our problem, however, is we are so easily seduced by the trappings and attractions of this world that we often succumb to the temptation to invert that paradigm. Consequently, we have a propensity to view time in terms of prioritizing our own purposes, plans, and goals above those which God Himself has ordained for us (Eph. 2:10).

“Time is given us to use in view of eternity.” – Henry Allan Ironside

By means of God’s common grace every person who has ever lived, regenerate and unregenerate alike, has been apportioned a certain measure of time on this earth. Ideally, it is to be used in service to the One who gifted that time to us to begin with. Unfortunately, however, not everyone appreciates this, including Christians. As the Puritan missionary David Brainerd, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 29 said, regrettably, “Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose.”

The irony of Brainerd’s self-effacing lamentation is that many would argue he was the greatest Christian missionary who ever lived.

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