Thursday Brew with Gwen: Counting the Hours

The life span of the average person is about eighty years. 

It seems a long time when one is living the moments, the days, the weeks, and the years.  Rearing children and educating them, maybe re-joining the workforce and coping with a mortgage.  One becomes so busy that every day is a memory before it has started.  Old age sets in and life is an open road with nothing in sight but boredom depending on a persons’ attitude to life.

Analyse eighty years and this is what you get; twenty three years sleeping, fourteen years working, eight years in amusement, six years eating, and four years in transportation.  Four years spent in conversation, one year reading and one year in learning.

If one is a church goer and attends every Sunday and stayed to the last hymn and they prayed every day for five minutes night and morning, the time spent on God would only amount to five months.  Five months out of eighty years!

Hang on a Second

Eighty years is but a second when compared to eternity, yet those eighty years determine where one will spend eternity.  So much depends on the choices made during the eighty years. 

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will out-last the here and now. Life will have been misspent if one gets to the end without knowing a living Christ, so as we face the New Year, there will be choices that will affect one’s life forever.

Good intentions and resolutions leave us sitting on the fence disengaged with life.  There is no second chance at life to rectify the mistakes one has made however much we try to patch up the damage done. Of course owning up to the mistakes and making restitution is important, the past though, is not like a pair of jeans that can be patched and restored like new. 

Think of what God has spent on us, life to start with, daytime, night-time, a climate conducive to life and to cap it all off his son Jesus Christ.  When we have Jesus we have everything, so the Bible declares. When we have Jesus, we have all that he has, we become Joint heir with him in the Father’s will.  Imagine inheriting from God everything Jesus inherits.

What have we invested in God?  If we arrive at the end of life, five months spent on God isn’t going to be enough. Our whole life needs to be spent, not on the concept of God, the going to church and the praying but the relationship with God himself.  The acceptance of God within us and the knowledge of Christ’s goodness as our goodness is a must.  It is possible in fact, necessary to finish life well, to do so we need to accept what God has given us and enter into a relationship with him.

I rather think to count the time God has spent on us is impossible. Our five months of time spent on God is very puny in comparison. Only a relationship with God will be comparative and satisfactory to both parties.