We Fritter Away Days Weeks and
Months by J. R. Miller Redeeming the time
because the days are evil. Ephesians 5 16. Gather up the
fragments that are left over. Let nothing be wasted. John 6
12. Time is short. 1 Corinthians
7 29. Time is made up of golden minutes,
not one of which we should allow to be wasted. The Master said
that for every idle word that men speak, they must give an
account. This can be no less true of idle
minutes or hours. Most of us live as if we had
a thousand years to stay here in this world. We loiter away
the golden hours of our little days, as if the days were never
to end. We do not see how swiftly the
sun is whirling toward his setting. While our work is but half done,
our task perhaps scarcely begun. We fritter away days, weeks,
months, not noticing how our one little opportunity of living
in this world is being worn off, as the sea eats away a crumbling
bank until its last shred is gone. We set slight value on
time, forgetting that we have only a handbreadth of it, and
then comes eternity. Many of us fail to appreciate
the value of single days. A day is too short a space, we
say, that it cannot make much difference if one, just one,
is wasted or idled away in pleasure. Yet the days are links in a chain,
and if one link is broken, the chain is broken. In God's plan
for our life, each little day has its own load of duty. How
these lost days shame us as they turn their reproachful eyes upon
us out of the irrevocable past. Many people are wasteful of time. They fail to realize its value. They appear to have it in such
abundance that they dream it can never end. They do not know
that a day lost may mean misfortune or failure for them sometime
in the future. They do not know that squandered
hours, minutes spent in idleness, may cost them the true success
of their life, bringing failure or disaster. They should not
make the mistake of imagining they have so much time that they
can afford to let days or hours or even minutes be wasted They
cannot afford to lose one golden minute of any day. We do not
know what momentous issues affecting all our future are involved in
any quietest hour of any commonplace day. There is a time for everything,
but the time is short, and when it is gone and the thing is not
done, it never can be done. What you make of your life you
must make in a few years at the most, for the human span is short,
and any day may be your last one. Every day that passes leaves
life's margin a little less for each of us. Our allotment of
time is ever shortening. There are a great many things
it is not worth our while to do. Some of us spend our days
in poor trivialities, which bless no one, and which will add no
luster to our crown. Therefore, waste no opportunity,
squander no moment, there is just time enough for you to live
your life well, if you spend every moment of it in earnest
faithful duty. One hour lost will leave a flaw,
a life thus lived in unbroken diligence and faithfulness will
have no regrets when the end comes.