Every year, around the middle of December, as everyone around me is scrambling to prepare for Christmas, my mind begins to settle in on the passing of one year to another. What went right this past year? What went wrong? What can I do to improve over last year. I am not sure why but as I get older I begin to think not about the past year, but the past decades. Then it occurs to me that I am not the only one who thinks about time. Our culture has songs and sayings about time.

They say that "time flies when you are having fun". This requires my mind to ask several different questions. Does this mean that we are having more fun as we get older? As a child Christmas could never get there fast enough, but as bigger children we begin to prepare for Christmas sometime around Labor Day. That is because we are having soooo much fun that Christmas will soon be upon us again and we musn't disappoint anybody. If time does indeed fly when we are having fun, what does this mean when time appears to be standing still? During these times are we incapable of having fun? Then again, how do I know when I am having fun? Oh yeah, the loose leaf pages of my desk calendar seem to be flying off the pad as if being blown by a breeze from an open window.

Another saying that says more about us than the actual saying is "time is of the essence". Usually when someone is saying this it is because someone didn't use their time wisely thus causing time to be "of the essence". Usually the very person notifying us of our clock emergency is the source of the problem to begin with. Therefore, lack of planning on their part creates an emergency on our part.

One saying that I never quite got was "a stitch in time saves nine". Nine what? is the first question that comes to mind. Perhaps the reason I don't understand this is because it is a sewing reference.

Scripture talks about the importance of time all the way back to Genesis. The Creator of time chose to sum up the number of years in the genealogies by saying that the number of their days were... . In Methusalah's case it was 969. Psalm 23:6 tells us that surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives. I think in each instance, the message that God is trying to get across to us is the importance of each individual day and how do we hold ourselves accountable for each day.

Probably the most common phrase regarding time is "time is money". That says more about the focus of our culture than anything. We don't always understand the concept of time and all that it implies. However, place it in terms of money and we get it. Shouldn't we as Christians have a different perspective? Perhaps our mantra should be "money is time". Let me explain.

Gift giving in our country has changed through the years as we have become more prosperous. Because of this change we have difficulty in grasping the value within a gift. It used to be that mom or grandma spent time during the late hours making gifts such as quilts, socks, gloves; or granddad made a toy out in his shop. The value of the gift was not found in the money it took for the gift but the time and effort of the person who made the gift. When someone has given me a gift I try to look at it in terms of the time it took that person to earn the money for that gift along with the time it took for them to select it and wrap it. The person giving the gift has placed a time value on the individual they are giving the gift to. Think about that the next time we casually drop a dollar or two in the plate for an evangelist or a missionary.

The song "Time in a Bottle" was brought to my attention the other day. The singer wishes he could capture all the special moments in his life and keep them in a bottle for posterity's sake. Whether intentional or not, the writer has stumbled onto a very deep truth. 

When I spend ten minutes with you that is the only time I will have that ten minutes, and I chose to spend it with you. You are also choosing to spend that time with me, time that is just as valuable to you as it is to me. The other choice that we have is how we spend that time with one another. Do we use it to build a bridge that we can cross at a future point in time? Or do we use it to build a house of cards made from small talk?

Time is a gift that we can give one another that may often go unseen, but rarely unnoticed by the recipient. It can be measured by dollars and cents if it is in gift form. However, it could also be that it is measured simply with a hug, a word of encouragement, or a prayer. As we approach the end of one year and the beginning of another, may we consider one another and provoke each other to good works with this gift, time.

Lee Berry