Echoes From the Campfire

[Don Adkisson]

       “The way to succeed in life was just to keep trying...and to keep faith.”
                    --Louis L'Amour  (Down the Long Hills)

       "Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance."

                    --Romans 5:3 (Amplified)
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                              "Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years.
                               One season following another,
                               Laden with happiness and tears."
                                       --Jerry Bock

People talk so much about inequality.  Racism causes inequality; wealth causes inequality, education causes inequality, environment causes inequality and on I could go.  However, there is one thing--everyone is equal in regard to time.  With time all mankind is equal.  Man has so many days and then life is over.  Everyone has the same amount of time--86,400 seconds.
       What is time?  Simply stated, the definition of time is "a stretch of duration in which things happen."  We are given so much time on this earth by the Lord.  What we do with it is all important.  God has a plan that embraces every human and all their actions in all times.  Issac Watts wrote, "Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away."
       One thing that we simply don't remember, or care to look at, or take for granted is that time is rare!  Read that again--Time is rare!  "I want to see that again," no, it doesn't happen in time, there is no instant replay.  Time is completely irretrievable.  You can never repeat it or live it again.  The philosopher Willian James said, "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."  What are you doing in time that will outlast you?  As a Christian, what are you doing in time that will last through eternity?
       Another thing that all mankind has in common in regard to time is that time is temporary.  It is a speck in the scope of eternity.  Each day should be deemed as important.  Each day should be looked at as an opportunity.  Each day should be seen through the lens of eternity.

               "The man who has learned the secret of enjoyment as a gift from God will not become anxious over the length of his life.  He has too much joy living to brook over the impermanence of his mortal being.  Rather each day is taken as it comes, as a gift from God."
                                  --Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

       We should be conscious of time; how we spend it, how we waste it.  There is only so much time allotted to each of us so we should be using it to build the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of self.  We should practice the appropriate actions at the proper time.  What is it that God would have us to do?  
         
               "Your eyes beheld my substance.  In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed."
                                  --Psalm 139:16 (NRSV)

D.C. Adkisson