Our Bible verse for today: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24 (NIV)
Our thought for today: “We make time for the people and the things that are truly important to us.”
The song “Cats in the Cradle” was a smash hit for singer Harry Chapin in 1974. It tells the sad story of a man who always had the best of intentions to spend quality time with his son, but he was so wrapped up in life and in earning a living that he never seemed to get around to it. There was always a reason, always an excuse. Slowly but surely the years went by and soon the son was a man with a busy life and a family of his own, and no time for his now elderly and retired father. The son had become just like the father.
What many people don’t know is that the song was actually written originally as a poem by Harry’s wife Sandy, and the boy in the story was their son Josh. Harry was so convicted by the powerful story and the way it applied to his family life, that he turned it into a song and then tried to restructure his life around it. Unfortunately, Harry died in a tragic car accident not too many years after that and he never had very much quality time with his son.
We often hear people make the excuse “I would love to spend time with that person, or doing that thing, if I just had the time.” Well, that’s a lie. The truth is that you have as much time as anyone else. You have 24 hours in every day. Then you, like the rest of us, have to make choices about how you will spend that time. And the truth is that we make time for the people and things that are most important to us – and for the rest we make excuses.
Yesterday I made the point that when you give a person some of your time you have in reality given them a little piece of your life, because your life is made up of time. Giving a person some of your time is an act of love. It communicates to that person that they are so important to you that they are worthy of receiving a piece of your life – a piece that you can never have back.
So, do you love God? How much time do you spend with Him? Do you love your spouse, your children, your friends? How much of your time do they get? Do you love your church? How much time do you spend there and how involved are you in the life of your church?
We often say that people and things are important to us, but then we make excuses for not spending time with them. Words are cheap. It’s actions that tell the real story. We make time for the people and the things that are truly important to us, and for the rest we make excuses.
If we truly love people then we will make time for them. This is an important truth – so important that we will come back to it again tomorrow.
Oak Hill Baptist Church