BREVITY

Today is Friday, already. It seems like this week as gone by unusually fast. As a matter of fact, it's Friday April 21, another week and this month will be just a memory. The year 2006 will be 4 months old! Before you know it we (or at least I) will be wanting to break out some Bing Crosby and put up the Christmas tree. Which for me usually happens in October anyway. What can I say, I love Christmas. When I was a kid Christmas to Christmas seemed to take a decade. Now it seems less like 10 years and more like 10 minutes.

I'll never forget what an older gentlemen told me on the Sunday after my high school graduation (which was 10 years ago now). He said, "Son, enjoy it while you can. 'Cause now each year will go by quicker than the one before it." At the time I thought this was just another unwanted nugget of wisdom from some old dude. Of course, like most things that generation has said to me throughout my life, he hit it on the nose. Time seems to be rapidly gaining speed.

Time is a weird thing. It's slippery. It seems to always slide by without us ever getting our hands on it long enough to make use of it. How many times do we wake up on Saturday morning feeling like another week has gone by and all our good intentions remained just that, intentions. "Next week!" The motto of life. "Next week I'll _____." I've got things that have been on my "next week list" for at least three years.

The problem is the window of opportunity is narrowing. After all our lives are but "a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14 NIV). The list of things we planned to do and didn't, has piled so, that the things we need to do now seem impossible. Thus we do nothing. So now that we are all depressed, what do we do? How we be get a grasp on this fleeting yet vital gift called time? I wish I had the magic formula, but I don't. However God has been teaching me a few things that are helping.

Some crumbs that are helping me make better use of my time:
1. Think Today ( I spend way too much time on what was and what could be. Think about what is.)
2. Slow Down (I know it seems impossible. But where we going in such a hurry? And can hurrying really get us there sooner?)
3. Priority One (Do the important things! Don't waste time on the insignificant.)