Stewardship

APAD DAY 7

by Daniel Owino Ogweno
02/23/17
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The Stewardship of Time

Time is one of the most precious things that was given to us. We need time to work, sleep, eat, rest, study, catch a means, wait, think, etc. There is no need of listing further because we need time for everything. This means that time is one of the most difficult things to manage. The management challenges of time usually hit a pitch high when we are called upon to share it. The reason is that most of the times, we would be called upon to share our time when we are at the verge of doing something or in the middle of it, if not at the critical moment of concluding it. In all the three stages, we expect little or no disturbance. In fact, we don’t want interference even when we are doing nothing—that is another expression for resting.

I didn’t list everything for which we need time but let us consider the few things I have mentioned above. How does it feel when someone seeks to have your time when you want to work, sleep, eat, rest, study, catch a means, wait, think?

If someone claims your time when you are eating, your food will cool; in some cases, you would forgo eating because the time scheduled for eating would be up. If you are cooking and someone engages you on phone because he just must talk to you, the food will probably burn or you may not prepare the food in time for people who are coming home for lunch/supper. What about when you are rushing out to catch a bus? Or, when you are so tired you just want to sleep?

As a writer, I can tell how it is sometimes difficult to suspend the flow of thoughts in order to attend to someone who wants to chat or need some help.

For majority of people, time and money are two things that they don’t get enough of. This is why, we need to be careful how we manage time. There are of course people who get lonely and bored. They seem to have a lot of time that they don’t know what to do with it. Pain, impatience, anxiety and other discomforting situations can make time drag. Whatever the case, we must always strive to put our time into good use.

Time can be wasted, spent or invested. The time you spend bored and idle is a wasted time. I usually get some unsolicited invitations by some females for a chat. They usually begin by saying: “I am bored!” An adage goes: An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

When you accept the invitation to chat with an idle person, you quickly realize that the devil has actually been ‘workshopping’ in the person’s mind. She would tell you that she wants you to link to some websites and see her ‘naughty’ photos. She doesn’t get ashamed even after terming her photos ‘naughty’.

If you don’t have anything to do, find something to do. If you don’t feel like doing anything, ignore your feelings and do something. If you don’t get anything to do, the devil will find so many things to do in your mind. There are lots of things somebody can choose to do: read a good book; read your Bible; visit the neighbour; take a walk—you never know who you may meet. The list is endless.

There ought to be a balance. Use of time can swing between two extremes: being too busy with some things at the expense of other equally important things on the one hand and on the other, being idle. Some people can be idle not because they don’t have anything to do but because they are lazy. Some claim that they are bored because there is nothing to entertain them.

Time is too precious to waste or misuse. Moses made a prayer recorded in Psalm 90:12: “… teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” The apostle Paul also tells the Ephesians to redeem the time, because the days are evil (5:16). In one of its definitions, to redeem means to ‘restore’. We know that time wasted will never be recovered; there is no way we can ‘restore’ yesterday. Yesterday is gone forever. There are certain things that must be done within a certain period of time. If we apply the heart of wisdom, the first thing that we need to understand is to use time prudently. Talking about redeeming time, the apostle Paul must have been advising that we rescue our time from the grips of the seductive world of entertainment and pleasure.