Are you a clock watcher? Yes, you! I am. Guilty!
Someone start telling a story, teaching a lesson, reading a news story, or going down some rabbit trail, then I gently pick up my phone and check the time.
Why my phone? I quit wearing a watch 35 years ago, or so. My wrists are huge and I’ve always struggled with getting bands to fit. So. I quit wearing a watch and have used my pager, phone or some other clock on the wall to gauge the passing of time.
With modern phones it’s easy to simply look at the screen and see how much time has passed, and believe me, there are times I have to do it! Aghast! How much time has passed??? This is why I multi-task. Do while listening, complete while talking.
Now that I put it into words, I’m surprised more people don’t watch their clocks more often!
Time is a valuable commodity, once spent it can never be recovered. I’ve caught myself daydreaming, or going down some involuntary rabbit trail of my own choosing, or watching the pot and waiting for it to boil, and before you know it, the clock has ticked too far gone. You can’t recover what’s lost. Tick. Tock. That second is lost.
David writes a psalm about the everlasting God who sees a thousand years of time as but yesterday. (Psalms 90:4) And this teaches me something. God’s math does not limit itself to our view of time. Yes. We are finite, and we only have a little bit of time available, so, in the same Psalms David sums up his analysis by saying:
So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalms 90:12 NKJV)
Count our days. Hours. Minutes. Seconds. We cannot see a thousand years as if they were yesterday, but we can make wise use of every moment of our time.
Here’s my thought. Perhaps we should become a watcher of the clock. We expend a lot of energy on wasteful tasks when there is much we could be doing to gain that heart full of wisdom. Social media, gaming devices, incessant need to fill our lives with fiction, and finding those things that make us have warm fuzzy feelings about ourselves.
I try, but often fail, to see the value of playing Angry Birds, or reading Facebook, or following Tweets. True. Some good comes from all our time spent connecting with others, but how much time do you spend playing around with that valuable commodity that can never be replaced?
Just saying. It may be time to take an accounting of your activities. Clock Watcher, you say? Yep. It just may be time.