Buying Time

The world will tell you that “time is money.”
In part, it’s true.  Every moment is precious and we can only spend it once.  We sell off bits of the gift of time, our life, to buy things that we think add to our happiness here.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve become dissatisfied with this exchange.  This spending of the most precious to gain the fleeting.  I’ve not bought into the American “bigger/more is better” but it’s so easy to just slip into the daily-ness of life here that we can’t remember how we actually spent the past week, month, year…  Same old, same old as the sand slips quickly through the hourglass.  Oh, wealth can afford you to hire people to free up some of your time, but you have to maintain the wealth, that takes time. 

But what if I told you that you could buy more time.

How much would you want?

What would you be willing to sell to buy it?

The paradigm shift comes when you realize that Time is the most valuable commodity on earth.  It’s easy, from this perspective, to sell money to buy time.  Yes, that is the secret.  Sell the income, the comfort, and buy time.  Then time can be spent on truly eternal things.  Relationships, time with The LORD, serving others…  Scripture says “No one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.” Matthew 6:24  I have not lost my devotion to God, but over the years, “making a living” has become a master –I, its slave, and time and life are the price that is paid.

There was a question posed in a Bible study I did a few years ago.  “Would you say “yes” to God, even if you didn’t know the question.”  Immediately my heart said yes, but my mind.  My mind began to fill in the the blanks and wondered what could be asked and fear did creep up and I hesitated.  It took reminding myself of God’s faithfulness to us all these years, soaking in the Truth that as a Loving Father He is for us in all things, before the answer was “yes, LORD.”  Our answer today is “Yes, LORD,” ask what You will.

This is where we are, Dave & I.  It started first with the thought of downsizing.  That grew into a readiness for radical change.  We asked ourselves what we’d give up to have the time we wanted. Would we sacrifice “retirement”, vacations, the “American way of life” (no brainer on that one!) to gain time with our family and ability to go when God called?

As of this morning we await the LORD’s question as we wait for His direction on where our new home will be.  Our home of the last 18 years is all but sold! (Things go quickly once we align ourselves with His plan! I wonder if He’s making up for our wasted time LOL) We’ve begun boxing up our life, holding memories in our hands, and as we let the tangible go, sometimes tearfully, we elevate the most precious – the memory itself and the time it lived in.  Our plan is that I will take a sabbatical then return to work part time, so that we can squeeze every ounce of goodness out of the time God gives us with our family and friends and increase our ministry to those around us.     

We’re selling money to gain what's most precious – Time!