| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “How to inhabit time” Our Bible verse for today: “Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” Psalm 90:12 (CSB) Our thought for today: “Don’t waste your time” Happy New Year! Welcome to 2023. If you were at Oak Hill Baptist Church for the New Year Day service, or if you watched online, then you know that the sermon was about how to make the most of the time God will give us in 2023. The moments of our lives are a gift from God – every moment of every day. It’s all grace. It’s all a gift. In front of you there are 12 new months, 52 new weeks, 365 new days, 8,760 new hours, 525,000 new minutes, and 31,536,000 new seconds. How will you use them? Will they pass you by in a blur as you rush through life from one activity to another? Will you waste your time dwelling on the past and worrying about the future? Will you do things of consequence that make a difference for you and for others? I confess upfront that I borrowed the title for this month’s theme. It comes from a book I read last year with the same title, “How to inhabit time: Understanding the past, facing the future, living faithfully now.”, by James K.A. Smith. Smith is a professor of philosophy at Calvin University, and as a philosopher, he tends to spend a lot of time thinking about things like “how to inhabit time”. His book is insightful and thought-provoking, and I’ll refer to it from-time-to-time throughout the month. We need to understanding how to live fully and live well. I will also draw from John Mark Comer’s excellent work “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”, and from “Three Mile an Hour God” by Kosuke Kayama, who is in heaven now but in this lifetime, he was a respected and influential Japanese theologian and philosopher. Kayama taught that God walks with us through life at our speed (three miles an hour) and if we go too fast, He slows us down so we can appreciate and savor the moments of life. The point is that life is too precious and too short to waste our time regretting the past, worrying about the future, or rushing through our days. We also want to be sure that our lives matter and that they make a difference. Let’s resolve that in 2023 we won’t waste our time but will instead, make the most of it. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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