Redeeming the Time

 

Redeeming the time because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:16

            Sullivan County Pennsylvania is the location of World’s End State Park.  I once backpacked out of World’s End on the Loyalsock trail.  My first memory of that trip was the vertical ascent up the trail.  The visitor’s center for the park is nestled in the bottom of the valley.  The only way out is up.  To my body, it felt like it was straight up.  Hands and feet were required for the first two miles as we climbed over 1000 vertical feet.  It was a test of manhood even then for my much younger body. 

            Throughout my life, I have experienced other similar tests of manhood.  On another occasion, I hiked up Pike’s Peak.  I was in my mid-twenties and an active distance runner.  It was a little over fourteen miles from the trail head to the summit.  Pike’s Peak is 14,110ft at it’s peak.  It is the only “fourteener” I have ever summited.  Oxygen becomes scarce above the timber line especially for those who are not used to those elevations.  It took me five hours to summit that mountain.  While I am proud of that accomplishment, I must confess that above tree line and probably 2 miles from the summit, I was passed by a lady who was at least in her 60s and probably in her 70s.  That part of the experience was quite humbling. 

            This brings up an important question in my mind.  How do we prove our manhood today?  In day-to-day life, people are looking for men that will “man up”.  They are looking for someone to step up and do what needs to be done.  Far too often that person is nonexistent.  When people look at you what do they see?  Do they see a man who has embraced responsibility, or a boy trapped in a man’s body?  As men, large swaths of our days are managed and controlled by someone else whether we work for someone or are self-employed.  In those times, most men “do their job”.  What about the rest of your day?  What do you do with the time you have that is not managed and controlled by someone else? 

            I have reflected on this question at different times in my life.  I have always been impressed with men from history, and what they accomplished in their lives.  What always impressed me was how much they accomplished without modern convenience, and how much they accomplished in a shorter lifespan than you and I are afforded.  Whenever I start to chew on this idea, I always begin to reflect on my personal time management.  As men, we need to redeem the time, because after all, we would agree that the days are evil (Ephesians 5:16).    

            Redeeming the time is something we should learn and apply from an early age.  We need to develop that habit from the start and militantly protect that habit.  Without vigilant oversight on our part, we become time wasters without even realizing it.

            Near World’s End State Park in Sullivan County Pennsylvania is the small community of Forksville.  Loyalsock Creek passes through this borough, dividing the community.  If you were to visit Forksville today, you would see a beautiful covered bridge spanning over 150 feet and connecting what the creek divides.  That bridge has stood the test of time, having survived several major floods.  The amazing part is that the bridge was built in 1850 by Sadler Rogers, a native of Forksville, when he was 18.  I find this a remarkable testimony to what man is capable of if he redeems the time he has.  You have to see the magnitude of this accomplishment.  Obviously, young Sadler Rogers was redeeming his time years before he began constructing that bridge.  His life must have been full of time spent wisely.  It was those experiences, stacked one upon another, that equipped him for that moment in his 18^th year when his friends and neighbors needed a bridge, and they entrusted their lives into the hands of an 18-year-old.   

            So, what could you accomplish if you redeemed your time?  The average male 15 years old and older spends 4.6 hours each day on leisure things.  That works out to 32.2 hours per week.  Of those 4.6 leisure hours, 2.75 hours are spent watching things.  That works out to 19.25 hours of screen time each week.  What if you redeemed that time faithfully?  It takes 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the entire Bible aloud at “pulpit” rate.  That means that if you only redeemed the screen time in your life, and instead spent that time daily reading the Word of God, you would read through the Bible over 14 times in one year!

            What if you reappropriated all 4.6 hours daily for an entire year.  You could build a new house each year and take 12 weeks of vacation!  You could build a canoe in 9 weeks.  You could walk from coast to coast in 15 months.  Let me step on everyone’s toes.  None of us are accomplishing any of those achievements on that time scale.  Why is that?  It is because we are wasting time.  Time that we have been told to redeem for a far greater reason than to build a house, build a canoe, or take a transcontinental hike!

            Ephesians 5:18 tells us, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.”  We may not understand what it should look like to be filled with the Spirit, but we all can get a picture in our mind of what it looks like to be drunk with wine.  In fact, Proverbs paints the picture in words for us.

Who hath woe?  Who hath sorrow?  Who hath contentions?  Who hath babblings?  Who hath wounds without cause?  Who hath redness of eyes?  They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.  Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.  At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.  Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.  Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.  They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not:  when shall I awake?  I will seek it yet again.

Proverbs 23:29 – 35

Drunkenness is described as, “excess” in Ephesians 5:18.  It is saying drunkenness is a waste of resources.  Who or what is the resource that is wasted?  It is YOU and your time.  Actually, what that verse is fully laying out for us is to be filled with the Spirit because anything less is a waste of resources…a waste of YOU.  It is a waste of your life!  If we are wasting our life, we are clearly not redeeming the time!

Men, we must commit to surrendering completely to the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to use our time for the glory of God!  Imagine how much different your life might be if you traded a love of leisure or addiction to screen time for a love of the Lord.  How different would your marriage be?  How different would your family be?  How different would your job or career be?  How different would your church be?  What if today, you and I got serious about stacking experiences one upon another as Sadler Rogers must have done, so when we are pressed into service, we are equipped for the work before us  (II Timothy 3:16 – 17).