Article in Hope in Action Newspaper, 1997

Time to Think

by Dave Konkol,

In a new book titled Time for Life, two time management experts recently concluded that we have more free time today than at any other point in the past three decades. How can that be?

How many of you feel you have more free time on your hands these days? If you're like most folks I'll bet you're wondering why you're so stressed out and overcommitted, not trying to figure out what to do with all the free time you have on your hands.

The average American, according to the book, enjoys close to 40 hours of leisure time a week. How many of us feel that we have as much leisure time in a week as we spend at work?

According to the study, here's how we spend our free time:

• 15 hours in front of the television
• 6.7 hours socializing
• 4.4 hours talking on the phone or with family members
• 2.8 hours reading
• 2.7 hours on hobbies
• 2.2 hours involved in adult education
• 2.2 hours recreating
• 1.2 hours involved with other organizations
• 0.9 hours enjoying cultural events
• 0.9 hours in religious activity
• 0.4 hours listening to the radio or recordings

I'm curious about those 54 minutes we spend in religious activity. I wonder what that includes. Hmm. Does that mean most of us come late and leave early for Sunday morning worship services?

God calls us to be good stewards of our time. Each of us has only 168 hours a week to eat, sleep, work, play and take out the garbage. How much of that time is spent in typical spiritual or religious activity?

Here's a little quiz you can take to check your own spiritual temperature.

• How much time do you set aside for the purpose of prayer?
• How much time do you spend reading (not necessarily studying) your Bible?
• How much time do you spend reading or listening to material specifically meant for your spiritual development?
• How much time do you spend sharing your faith with others or simply talking about God with others? You can include your own family in this calculation.
• How much time do you spend serving others? This would only include those you go out of your way to serve, not those in your immediate family. By the way, did you know that our children learn most about the importance of caring for others by watching their parents?

Sometimes I think we can get so consumed with taking care of ourselves that we fail to recognize how much free time we have for God and for others.

If God said we'd have to spend more time worshipping Him, praying to Him, talking to others about Him, learning about Him or caring for others like Him, how many of us would say, "I just don't have time."?

I think that one of the greatest challenges we all face as we get ready to enter the 21st century, in addition to trying to keep our sanity, is to learn how to spend our time wisely.

Time is like money in many ways. We spend it and we often run out of it. But unlike money we can't really save time. God gives us only 24 hours in a day. We spend all of those 24 hours in one way or another.

Isn't it worth taking a bit of that time every once in a while to ask God to help us take a good look at how we spend it?