THE PRECIOUSNESS OF TIME.
"So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom" (Psalm xc. 12).
Once more you, my dear girl friends, and I meet to hold pleasant
converse with each other.
I feel that something specially pleasant would be missing from my own
life were our twilight talks to cease. It is with a sense alike of
happiness and thankfulness that I look forward to your companionship
for yet another year. God grant that, as in the past, so in the future,
we may be very helpful to each other in crossing the rough places that
have to be encountered on the path of life.
I feel that a song of thanksgiving should go up from us all for
mercies already bestowed, and an earnest united prayer to God for an
ever-increasing blessing upon our meetings.
One thought must come to us all this evening. Two years have passed
since we first came together, hence we feel that so much of our lives
has gone, and we have two years less in which to work for God.
It will be good for each of us to ask ourselves, "What have I done for
Him during the time? What progress have I made in my spiritual life?
Have I grown, as Jesus grew, 'in favour with God and man' during these
years?"
Conscience will answer and can tell only the truth.
Such communings with your own hearts are, however, for the quiet of
your own chamber, when you have shut out the world and are alone
with God. Still, it may be well for us all to have a talk about the
preciousness of some things of which we are too apt to take little
account.
I wonder if you and I are in the habit of frittering away two
invaluable gifts for which we have to give a strict account to our
Father in heaven. These are, time and opportunity.
I think I hear you ask, "What do you mean by frittering? The dictionary
tells us that 'to fritter' is to diminish or pare off."
I acknowledge that here we do not get quite the full meaning of the
word "fritter" as we often use it in conversation. We rather understand
by it the diminution of something by almost imperceptible degrees, of
which no notice need be taken, because they are so small, and through
the waste of which little loss is sustained by ourselves or others.
There are things in this world which are of small value in certain
places, because they are so abundant; yet, in another neighbourhood,
their scarcity makes them of vital importance. For instance, if we have
unfailing springs of pure water to draw upon, and all our neighbours
are equally well supplied, what matters it if the pail overflows, or
the tap is left running? But in another place where water is scarce,
the waste of it would be sinful and cruel, especially if we were well
supplied and our neighbours compelled to economise every drop.
The child on the sea-shore flings the sand about with reckless hands,
gathers shells and leaves them behind, or throws pebbles into the
water, caring nothing what becomes of them.
There is no need for care in such cases. The sea gathers the shells
and pebbles and flings them back in orderly ridges on the shore. The
embankments, laboriously raised by many small hands, and the trenches
dug around them, are quickly equalised again. The mighty ocean sweeps
all before it. Wave follows wave, and the grains of sand are hurried
onward. Castles are levelled, trenches filled, and the retreating
waters leave the beach smooth again and ready for the morrow's toilers.
The last murmur of the waters seems to say, "You can fritter away
nothing over which we flow. We gather your scattered fragments
together, and not one grain is finally lost."
You and I, dear girl companions, have certain great trusts committed
to us, which are neither visible nor tangible. We hold them in common
with our neighbours, though they are not given to all in the same
proportion. They are made up of littles, and yet, if we fritter them
away, they are gone past recovery. We can no more regain the smallest
portion than we can bring back the rain-drops which have fallen into
the stream and are helping to hurry it seaward, or collect the grains
of dust which the wind has whirled across the plain.
Time is one of these all-important trusts. Perhaps I should say the
most important, for time and our natural life virtually mean the same
thing. Do they not begin and end together, so far as we are concerned?
Our first breath ushers us into the realm of time, and with our last we
close our eyes on it for ever.
Does it not seem strange that any human being can be found who is
careless about or forgetful of the preciousness of time? People
hesitate to part with a penny unless they can be sure of receiving
something of equal value in exchange. Yet the same persons think
nothing of frittering away, without return, that which the wealth of
the whole world cannot buy back for them.
It seems natural for the very young to think lightly of the flight of
time. The world--in other words, time and life--is all before them. A
day flies so quickly; an hour is a mere nothing. As to the minutes and
moments! What are they more than the drops that make up the ocean, or
the grains of sand that form its boundary wall? Who can exhaust these?
Time, to the child, is an inexhaustible ocean into which he cannot dip
too freely. What if the tide recedes? It is sure to flow again, and is,
indeed, ever flowing.
You and I have surely learned lessons as to the value of time to which
the child would not care to listen even. Let us think together of the
value of moments. They follow each other, and are swallowed in the
ocean of eternity, but there is no reflux. Not one comes a second time.
If an hour has been frittered away and we can show nothing for it, all
that remains for us is to make the best possible use of its successors.
Very lately I heard a great preacher say, "We should be misers in
the use of time and opportunity." Do we not value too highly what we
call the riches of this world? We are sparing of our gold, or our
silver--even of our pence--and yet we do not pause to take account of
what is beyond all price.
Have you ever thought, dear girls, that you are threefold debtors as
regards the use you make of this great trust, time? We are all debtors,
in the first place, to God, and must account for the use or abuse of
time to the great Giver of it. We are told to "redeem the time because
the days are evil."
I have in my mind the words of an old writer and profound student of
the Bible who says about the text I have just quoted, "Buying up those
moments which others seem to throw away; steadily improving every
present moment." "Time is that on which eternity depends. In time you
are to get a preparation for the kingdom of God." "Perhaps the apostle
means in general, embrace every opportunity to glorify God, benefit
your own souls, and do good to men."
These words carry out the idea I have suggested as to our threefold
debt in relation to the use of our time. We should be misers of it,
that we may the more fully carry out our divine Master's will, follow
His example, obey His commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves,
and, in so doing, promote our own eternal welfare.
You and I can understand the need for us to echo the prayer of the
Psalmist, "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts
unto wisdom."
How much teaching we need! What heedless and forgetful scholars we are!
How constantly we need to be reminded of the value of that which we
treat so lightly, waste so often, and lose with so little regret!
All other losses cause us trouble and generally sorrow. If the child,
in hurrying to spend a halfpenny, loses its one precious coin, there is
eager searching with the help of companions. Joy follows its recovery,
or bitter tears are shed if it is not found.
The lost purse, or the jewel that has escaped from its setting, is
neither forgotten nor deemed of slight consequence. It is sought,
advertised for, and, if finally lost, is remembered with regret; the
more so if it has been the gift of a friend.
The merchant will risk large sums in the hope of doubling them. If
unsuccessful, he can hardly forgive himself for having thrown away that
which he had. Losses of these kinds are thought of again and again in
after days, and the face clouds over at the memory of them.
How few amongst those who have recklessly wasted moments, hours, and
days, pause to take themselves to task, mourn over an irretrievable
loss, and resolve, by God's help, to redeem the time that is left. As
regards the season for making the new beginning, there is only one
word to express the right one: now. Not a week hence. Not to-morrow.
Not even an hour after the resolution has been come to; for time is
flying always, and its redemption must begin with the moment which has
revealed to us its infinite value. Henceforth we must be "misers in the
use of time."
Time is often unwittingly wasted by thrifty people for want of due
thought and calculation. How well I remember, in the earlier days of
railway travelling, what anxiety to be in time for a train was evinced
by old-fashioned people!
I used to stay in a country house which was several miles from a
station, and my kindly host was so fearful of my missing the train,
that he used to insist on my starting early enough to spend nearly an
hour in waiting for it.
It was very difficult to turn that waiting time to any useful account,
especially in the dim light of a wintry morning, for I had to catch the
first train. I smile as I picture the little bare waiting-room and the
scarcely-lighted fire, by which I sat and shivered and tried to cherish
bright thoughts amidst dull surroundings.
Those who value their own time lightly are seldom scrupulous about
wasting that of their neighbour. Have we not all been lectured, again
and again, on the sin of unpunctuality?
I think I hear you ask whether unpunctuality deserves to be ranked as a
sin? Let us consider the question, then decide for yourselves.
Neither you nor I would like to steal our neighbour's purse, or
even help ourselves to a solitary sixpence. But if, by our neglect,
carelessness or wilful selfishness, we rob him of that on which his
income depends, are we not equally guilty, though the law cannot reach
us for this offence? Time is money to the toiler in every branch of
work, whether mental or physical, and we have no right to waste our
neighbour's capital which money cannot restore to him.
So many people, old as well as young, seem unable to understand
what punctuality means. Those who allow their own time to slip away
unheeded, cannot see that it matters whether they are a few minutes
too soon or too late for an appointment. If by some chance--a rare
one--they are too soon, they plume themselves on this, and are perhaps
inclined to be indignant if they are kept waiting and their time is
wasted.
Dear girls, do think of this! If you make an appointment try and keep
it to the minute. Be neither before nor after the time fixed, but by
your punctuality redeem your own time and avoid the sin of wasting what
is not your own.
Indolence is a terrible and stealthy thief that ought to be battled
against, with a prayerful sense of our own weakness to resist its
encroachments. Indolent people are like unpunctual ones--very prone to
steal the time which their neighbour values and turns to good account.
How many busy men and women have had to work when they ought to have
been resting after a finished task, because an idler has interrupted
it by dropping in at the office or the home during working hours? The
one object of such visitors is to while away the time which hangs
heavily on their useless hands, regardless of consequences to those on
whom they intrude, or too selfish to care, so long as their own end is
served.
Unfortunately the sufferers have not always a remedy. Circumstances may
render it unwise to complain, or politeness restrains them from doing
so, even when they are inwardly chafing under the infliction. They do
not like to deny themselves to these thieves of time, for whom perhaps
they feel a very real affection; or it may be they cannot afford to
risk giving offence on account of their relative positions. Hence they
suffer in silence.
There are hard-working girls as well as older folk who suffer in like
manner, through other girls who place no value on their own time and
have no qualms of conscience about wasting that of their neighbours.
Take the lesson to heart, dear ones. Ask that you may realise the full
value of your own time, and abstain from robbing another of what she
esteems a precious trust from God.
There are unsuspected ways of wasting time which those who "use it
as misers" are apt to overlook. The more eager the worker, the more
interested she is in her occupation, the more likely she is to be
guilty of this kind of waste in these high-pressure days.
I have no doubt there are many of these too-hard workers amongst you,
my dear girl friends, who grudge the time spent in rest, who hurry over
your meals, who regard innocent recreation as almost sinful, because it
interrupts your labours and defers the completion of some task you have
set yourselves.
Believe me, time is never more truly wasted than it is by those who
work too long, without pausing to refresh the weary mind and body. Time
is saved if, when nature cries aloud for rest, we put aside the work we
love and do absolutely nothing until we can return to it with a sense
of fitness and freshness.
"Do nothing!" you exclaim. "Why, that would be the hardest task of all.
We may compel our hands to be idle or our tired limbs to rest, but
thought will still be busy. The mind cannot be coerced."
Perhaps not in a sense, but if we wish it, we can turn our thoughts
into a restful channel. What can be more restful and delightful than
to sit with closed eyes and folded hands whilst we think over God's
gracious dealings with us and make a mental catalogue of a single
day's blessings? What can so renew our strength to work, as a little
season spent in thanking God for the power to labour? What will be
more helpful to us than a quiet time with Him whilst the world, its
cares and its business are shut out, and we, alone with our Father, ask
for wisdom to use without abusing our time and all the powers He has
entrusted to us?
Cultivate the habit of leaving off work when nature craves for rest,
and you will find it, both for soul and body, by fixing your minds on
God.
You need not utter either prayer or thanksgiving, but your thoughts may
overflow with both, and He who can read them will accept your heartfelt
thanks and answer your unuttered prayers by giving you a sweet sense of
peace and renewed power to work for Him.
Oh, it is lovely just to get away from the world and its bustle and
toil for a little while and spend it in thinking of the goodness and
love of God in Christ Jesus! Our work may well wait in the meantime.
I was with some dear friends who were sight-seeing in town, and who,
accustomed to the quiet of a country place, were almost bewildered with
the din of the great city. We were near St. Paul's, and how glad we all
were to enter the great church and to rest there in a quiet corner,
unconscious of all the noise and traffic which still went on around it.
My friends' stay in town was to be a short one, and they were all eager
to see as many of its sights as possible. Did they grudge the little
time spent in peaceful communion with God, or deem it wasted when there
was so much to attract them in the great city? Ah, no!
Often afterwards, when other incidents had faded from their memories,
they spoke of its sweet restfulness, and thanked God for the open door
of that grand cathedral, which offered to weary wayfarers a chance of
refreshment for soul and body.
Dear ones, learn a lesson from this little incident. Do not deem the
time lost which is taken from the work you love for the rest you need.
You will redeem it in the best way if you turn your thoughts from earth
to heaven, from the world around you to its great Creator.
Unfortunately those who under-value time are more numerous than those
who realise its preciousness. We often hear the expression, "I am only
giving my time." As though money and goods were of infinitely greater
worth. It is when health fails and life is drawing near its close
that the preciousness of every moment is understood. I beg of you to
remember now, that the right use of your time is your evidence to those
around you of your union with Christ.
Let us finish our talk this evening by repeating two or three reasons
why we should be misers in the use of time. Time and life mean the same
thing to us all. Time is a debt we owe to God. All our work must be
done in time. Eternity depends on the use we make of time. Time comes
only once, and the present is all we can call ours.
Let us ask God to impress these great truths on our minds and to give
us the will and the power to use time well.
(_To be continued._)
QUEENS AS NEEDLEWOMEN.