Counting Every Second

In 2015 the average life expectancy in the UK was 81.60 years, which is about 29,804 days, or roughly 2,575,065,600 seconds: which seems rather a lot of seconds until you realise that about 5 of them just passed by while you were reading this sentence (or probably about 10 if you read it out loud), seconds that you’ll never ever get back. This could be a rather bleak thought if we dwelt on it for too long, but it doesn’t need to be. Yes, all these seconds that are ticking by are precious things, but how precious are they really? And if they are precious how should we be spending them?

I expect we could google a dozen books on the subject of ‘effective time management’ and ‘making the most out of every moment of our lives’, books that eminent scholars and psychologists have spent half a lifetime studying, researching and scribbling down on paper (that’s over a billion seconds each!), but would they really help? Can they really tell us how to best spend the time we have allotted to us?

As I’m pondering this, an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon instantly springs to mind*. Picture the scene: Calvin is sitting in a bath surrounded by bubbles holding a piece of paper in his hands. ‘Look at this, Hobbes,’ he says rather indignantly, ‘I added it up and figured out I spend an average of four days a year taking baths! Four full days – morning, noon, and night – just sitting in the stupid bathtub! What could possibly be a bigger waste of time than that?!’ There’s a pause while Hobbes takes the paper and peers at it for a moment before turning back to Calvin. ‘How long did it take you to add this all up?’ he asks innocently.

Not too subtle perhaps but it does make an important point. How do we judge the value of the time we have here on earth? How do we determine what’s important and what’s not? And is it really worth asking questions about it or is that just another waste of the precious time we have? We can twist ourselves in knots trying to figure it all out but is it really worth it? Or is, perhaps, the ‘answer’ a whole lot simpler than many of us seem to think?

I picked up an interesting and challenging book while I was in YWAM, ‘Imprisoned in Iran’ by Dan Baumann, sadly I can’t seem to find it now but it’s well worth a read if you ever get your hands on it. The title kind of gives it away, as it’s largely about his experience as a westerner in an Iranian prison having been arrested for expressing his Christian faith in a country where it’s not encouraged to do so. It’s not his ordeals and triumphs in that most harrowing of situations that left the most lasting impression on me however, it was a the description of an encounter he had with God as a young man that really struck me. I apologise in advance as I’m sure there are aspects I’ve misremembered and others I’ve embellished but I believe I’ve captured the main premise. I recall him talking about a great struggle he had trying to figure out what he should be doing with his life. In his extreme frustration, he went out into the woods one day to have it out with God. He wrestled and shouted and implored God to give him an answer, to tell him what to do, but God was silent on the matter until, in that quiet moment when he’d finally come to the end of his strength, he felt God quietly say, ‘what do you want to do, Dan?’ And it was in that moment that he realised that the God of the Universe, much more that any great act of faith or heroic endeavour, simply wanted to spend time with him, even if it just meant them skimming stones into the river together. So, that’s what he did, skimmed stones with God.

This is the simple answer I think, and perhaps it’s just all made more complicated by our propensity to ask the wrong question. What if it’s not how we spend the precious seconds we have available to us that’s the most important thing, but rather who we spend then with? If every second counts, perhaps it’s infinitely more important that we spend as many of them as we possibly can in the presence of the Father who knows us best, rather than chasing around trying to figure out how we’re going to win His love or do something meaningful with our lives.

It’s the lesson of Mary and Martha all over again. We can spend all our efforts trying to impress or we can take time to sit at our master’s feet, revelling in his presence and absorbing his every word.

I know where I’d much rather be.

*Just as a bit of background for the uninitiated, Calvin is six years old boy whose best friend is a stuffed tiger called Hobbes; and Calvin, not unlike many boys his age, really hates baths.