This is Pastor Tim’s article which was published in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Dec 26, 2023
It doesn’t seem like all that long ago; I was writing the last article of 2022, and here I am, writing the last article of 2023. Where does the time go? That isn’t even a rhetorical question; I am really asking you: where did the time go? Because that is really the question, isn’t it? When thinking back on 2023, did you make good use of the past 365 days?
As many of you regular readers know, I get on your case a lot about striving to better yourself. And I am fighting hard to not let this become my standard New Year’s Resolution article that every preacher since Jesus Himself loves to write. But there is something to be said for making good use of your time.
One of the Bible’s best-kept secrets is an Old Testament king named Solomon. Solomon was the very rich and even more spoiled son of King David. God offered Solomon a gift when he was very young, and Solomon chose the gift of wisdom so that he could be a great leader to His people. God honored that gift, and Solomon is known as one of the wisest men who ever lived. He is responsible for writing three books of the Old Testament: Song of Solomon, Proverbs, and my personal favorite, Ecclesiastes. Solomon wrote Song of Solomon when he was a young man, which is not hard to believe if you go read the book. The book of Proverbs was written when he was in middle age, and it sounds very much like a father teaching his children how to navigate the world. And then there was Ecclesiastes, which was written when Solomon was an old man and had become quite cynical with the world.
Solomon, who refers to himself by the title Qoheleth, which translates to teacher, no longer finds much good in the world. He is cynical about money, ambition, and he is very cynical about women. But in the middle of what reads almost like a tirade against materialism and “chasing the wind,” he writes a poem. I am not going to record the poem here for space reasons, but it is a beautiful poem about time. It is found in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, and in this poem, it is stated that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. You may have heard the song by the Byrds called “Turn, Turn, Turn.” They took the lyrics from this scripture and put it to music.
The part of this scripture that speaks so clearly to me is that even the cynical old man that Solomon was identified that there is time for everything if we will take the time. In his old age, Solomon was looking at how much he had accomplished and how much he had neglected through the years, and he celebrated and regretted all of it at the exact same time. He did this because the one thing he realized very late in his life: our time is invested in what we prioritize. There is time for anything we make time for, and for us to blame time for what we didn’t accomplish is simply passing the buck.
Every person gets 24 hours a day. No exceptions, no exclusions. Every person is going to get 366 days between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024, because 2024 is a leap year. You will have plenty of time to do what you prioritize. Yes, that means there are things you are going to have to let go and not do, but you make these decisions every minute of every day, and when you add all of those choices up, you find out how your time was spent.
If you are coming to the end of 2023 and, like me, find yourself wondering how the time went by so quickly, know that you didn’t think it was going by too fast when it was happening. Everything that was truly important to you is what you did with that time.
If you are truly unhappy with 2023, then what you need to think about for 2024 are some new priorities. You have plenty of time to accomplish anything you prioritize. That is what old man Solomon realized, and it is a lesson that we need to learn sooner rather than later.