Your Time Investment

I imagine that many who are reading these words are “regular” readers of my column. I hope some of you may be blessing me with a few minutes of your life and are reading Musings for the first time. You see, over the past month I have been thinking quite a bit about how we people spend the time allotted for us here on earth. For instance, if you are 40 years old today, you have lived 350,640 hours. How have you invested these hours in living? Roughly one-third had gone to work, and maybe one-third to sleep. So that leaves you with approximately 116,880 hours to get ready for work, take care of business after work, and have the weekends. Granted these are not exact numbers, but close. It sounds like lots of time, doesn’t it?

However, if this person lived 31 years, 9 months, 17 days and 5 hours that would total roughly 285,800 hours of life. So, one-third of that is about 95,268 hours to get ready for work, take care of business after work, and have the weekends. In a way that still seems like a lot of time. But I can tell you from the perspective of a grieving father, you would rather your child had even way more than 40 years of life. The second scenario above is the lifespan of my son Jesse, who died on August 6th of this year. It seems to his family and close friends that we did not have Jesse near long enough to laugh, play and work with.

Jesus lived roughly 33 years on earth, just a bit longer than Jesse. I do not imagine he wasted as much time as I have, or you, on things that would have minimal impact on people, or eternity. For all the names his enemies gave him, I would bet your retirement savings that “slacker” was not one of them. We often read of Jesus rising early to spend time in prayer with God the Father. He rose early because time in prayer and communion with the Father was a high priority with Jesus. I am sure that he spent much time reading the scrolls of the Old Testament, even though as the author of those marvelous books He knew their words perfectly.

I believe that Jesus spent his time wisely, and the effects of his life are still echoing through the world and will be felt on into eternity. Over the past month, Lisa and I have heard from so many people who we and our family have impacted. We have heard from many, many friends of Jesse whose lives he impacted. You see, how we invest our allotted time here on earth matters. When we pass from this life into the next, people are going to be impacted. They will be shocked, numb, overcome with grief, regretful, angry, deeply saddened and more. They will feel like Jesse’s family has felt, and how his friends have felt. I regret we did not make it a priority to visit him more once he moved to Denver. I regret that I did not call him as much as I should have. You see I thought we had more time, but God knew we did not.

I miss him very, very much. But I know he knew how proud I was of him for the way he was heading in life. He had some rough times but seemed to be getting over them. I knew he regretted many of the decisions he made. But I also knew he was so thankful for the one decision he made in the fall of 2019, and that was to receive Jesus Christ into his life and have his sins forgiven and blessed with the gift of eternal life.

My prayer for you is that you might have invested some time in Bible study, church attendance in a Bible believing church, and that by faith you have received Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. It does not require much time or effort to do that, and the benefit package is out of this world! Sins forgiven, eternal life, and reunion with loved ones. Best of all, you get to spend eternity with Jesus! If you have not received Jesus as Savior, why not do so today. Call with questions and come visit us Sunday mornings at 10:30 in Wolf Creek at the Baptist Church.

Dave Carroll is an area missionary with InFaith, America’s oldest Christian home mission agency. He is also pastor of the Wolf Creek Baptist Church. You can contact Dave at 406.459.8935 or [email protected]