I have recently been slowly and deliberately reading How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now by James K. A. Smith. The book is very thought-provoking. My intent is not to do a formal book review here, but rather to make a few comments about the stewardship of time.
Smith writes, “God’s creative word, ‘Let there be…,’ started the clock. For everything created, to be is to be temporal, and to be temporal is to be indebted to a past and oriented towards a future. It is to move in a world where things come to be and pass away: events, words, attention, activities all have the characteristic of a kind of passing. As Augustine observes in his reflection on time, language is like an audible clock: communication is possible only if words emerge then fade, making way for the next word in the sentence. We ride the cusp of a wave we call the present, driven by the past and headed for the shore of the future” (page 27).
Every human inhabits a limited amount of time on the earth, which is bookended by birth and death. God knows the number of our days, and nothing comes as a surprise to him. Sometimes, people speak in terms of “saving time.” What they mean is using time better to be more efficient. In reality, we cannot “save time.” It approaches and then passes. We cannot bring back yesterday, stop today from passing, or control what will happen tomorrow.
I love the concept of “inhabiting time” that Smith uses. In reality it is what we do, we live out the days we are given and inhabit the time at hand. With this, we should seek to be good stewards of what has been entrusted to us. There never seems to be enough time for those of us who serve vocationally in ministry. We can either stress about this or embrace it and use our time in the best possible way.
It is said of King David in Acts that he “served the purpose of God in his own generation” (Acts 13:36). This should be our aim to serve the purpose of God in our own generation and look forward to what Jesus has prepared for us in eternity.
Are you a good steward of the time entrusted to you?
