What time is it, anyway?

There was a song in the 1970’s (totally before my time, of course:) that came out titled “Precious and Few”.  Some of you are reading this and your mind is wandering back to that era and remembering different events in your life, or even the girlfriend/boyfriend you had during this song’s popularity.

I feel that we have very few moments of real relationship time with our family.  I broke down my week and how my time percentages played out…give it a look:

 

Church related activities                                                   15 hours              (9%)

Work week                                                                        45-50 hours        (30%)

Sleeping                                                                             50 hours             (30%)

Eating                                                                                15 hours              (9%)

Exercising                                                                          5 hours                (3%)

                                                (estimates only…changes any given week)

Total hours doing stuff                                                     130-135 hours a week

                                                 (This is my physical commitment-“Have to be there”)

We have a total bank of 168 hours every week to allocate to our life…With my commitment of 135 hours a week I am left with 33 hours to allocate to other areas of importance:

                Bible study and prayer

                Dates with my wife

                Quality time with my kids

                Writing music, or learning more of my trade

                Fixing things around the house

                Mowing the lawn

                Hanging out with friends

                Mentoring others and being mentored

                Personal development and study

                Other

I consider all the things above highly important to accomplish, and with the list only being at 10 items, I have a weekly time allocation (if divided evenly…which they won’t be realistically) of 3.3 hours each.

3.3 hours with my wife a WEEK!  Not going to work.  I’ll list my priorities and allocate time accordingly, but my point in all this is to examine the budget of time I have available to me, and how best to use it.

Ephesians 5:16-17 tells us to not be foolish with our time, but make the best use of it in these evil days.

Just as many of us are tempted to spend our money with no real concern of a “budget”, so we spend our days.  We give valuable time God has made us stewards of to unnecessary and unimportant things.  What are we getting done?  What relationships are we nurturing? 

I encourage all of us to sit down and look at our time.  Write a list of items that represent your days (work, eating, etc).  List how many hours in the day you spend on such items and look at your week.  We may be surprised at how “foolish” we are being with our time. 

God Bless