Morning Devotional

August  15, 2005
"Threescore and Ten"      
    by Don Emmitte

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Seventy years are given to us! Some may even reach eighty. But even the best of these years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we are gone. (Psalm 90:10 NLT).

The New Living Translation says, “seventy years.” The King James Version uses the old English translation of “threescore and ten.” Either way, you’ve got approximately seventy years to live. Some more, some less, but all of us have a finite number of years given to us. It’s just another way of saying that you have a life to spend. What will you spend it on today?

We think a lot about how we spend our money. Rarely does a day go by when we don’t spend money on something. I can’t think of any activity that doesn’t involve spending money. What we do with our money in this society is a really big deal, but how often do we think about what we do with our life? How will your spend your life today? See, it even seems odd to ask the question. But it is a valid question—a very important question.

The fact that we don’t think of this says that we are not living on purpose. Oh, there’s a purpose all right—we live to get by. But is that a good way to spend a life? When you think of it, your life is more important than your money. It’s more important than just getting by. Your life is so much more than your money. It’s you—your heart, your mind, your soul, your gifts and talents. That’s a lot to spend on something.

For the past two weeks I have spent more than 120 hours at work. I know… you’re thinking that’s exactly what I have been saying you are not to do. It was a special circumstance with two key managers out for various reasons and we all had to cover for a little while. Believe me, I am going to cut back this week!

However, as necessary as those hours were, I have found myself asking whether I spent them well? I’m afraid that I can’t really say that the investment was really designed to bring the most return. There were other things that could have been done to maximize the time more. Perhaps I could have delegated, or rearranged schedules in such a way as to do something more with my time that would have been better.

The truth is that I could have spent my life better over the past two weeks. I don’t say this as a downer, but as an opportunity to change, so that next time, I will be more conscious of what I’m doing with my life. Reflection is about improvement. Maybe you need to reflect a little on your time spent recently too. Ask God to make you conscious of how you can better spend your time.