Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
You have the same 24 hours in your day as the most accomplished and greatest men and women in the history of the world. Then why do you still feel like you don't have enough time to do what you want to do and be who you want to be? Between all the busyness of life it feels like we just don't have the time. But what if it was possible to make more time. I think we can. And I think I know how.
Through a look at biblical precedent, and the value of community, and a few dad jokes, "Making Time" is timely look at timeless principles and a great resource for you, your family, church, or small group.
The Host: This is going to
sound a little on the dorm room,
philosophical side of things.
But.
We've been talking a lot
about time in this series.
And a lot of that has specifically
been about the feeling of time.
Feeling like you have enough
time or not enough time.
Time going quickly or time going
slowly, you know, like when you're a
kid and how each day felt like forever.
But now being a kid is 20, 30 years
ago, but it feels like two years ago.
Why does time have a feeling?
Why did those early days take so long?
And then the last few years go so fast?
Was I better at making time when
I was younger than I am now.
How many times did I sit in class
begging for the last five minutes
of class just to go a little faster?
Those five minutes in geometry went slower
than the last five years of parenting.
And now I'm sitting here minding
my own business, working on
this podcast called making time.
I write out all of these episodes
and aim for around 12-ish minutes.
And then when I record, it turns out
that they're like 20 minutes long.
And it's all the greatest podcast
that's ever been podcasted.
How am I supposed to edit like eight
whole minutes out of this gold?
Meanwhile you the beautiful, intelligent
listener you're sitting here annoyed
that I put so much music in these
episodes because it makes it a pain
to listen to at one and a half speed.
Yeah, I did that on purpose.
You and I are experiencing this podcast
at two completely different speeds.
And even though you are actually
listening to it at a faster speed.
Time is passing more slowly
for you than it is for me.
And the more time and effort I put into
this podcast, the faster and hopefully
more enjoyable, it becomes for you.
This is making time.
Where I try to make time.
Time for the good stuff.
Or at least.
A good podcast.
Audrey: Chapter 6: Number Your Days.
The Host: Here's today's big idea.
And honestly, This is the
last big idea for now.
Numbering your days gives you purpose.
Here's the Bible on numbering your days.
Hannah: Psalm 90:7-12.
For, we have been consumed by your anger,
and we have been terrified by your wrath.
You have placed our
guilty deeds before you,
our hidden sins in the
light of your presence.
for all our days have
dwindled away in your fury.
We have finished our years, like
a sigh.
As for the days of our
life, they contain 70 years,
or if due to strength, 80 years.
Yet their pride is only
trouble and tragedy.
For it quickly passes, and we disappear.
Who understands the power of your anger
and your fury, according to
the fear that is due you.
So teach us to number our days,
that we may present to
you a heart of wisdom.
Voice of the people: Yikes.
That's kind of wrathful and morbid.
The Host: Yeah, you are
not kidding around pal.
This is serious stuff.
Your days are numbered.
My days are numbered.
And here's the kicker.
Maybe our days are not kind of.
Uh, but let's look at this from
a couple of different angles.
Malcolm: Point Number One
The Host: The main idea, the big
picture point of this particular passage
is to give us a sense of urgency.
I've only got a little bit of time here.
Spending it being selfish or
self-centered, which means like I'm
going to live and act like I will be
here forever with no consequences,
That's obviously ridiculous.
The clock is ticking.
My mirror is a timer
counting down my days.
The numbers are too faint to see,
but I can hear the seconds slip away.
That ticking clock that you
hear that beating time is great.
I love it.
It's a shortcut to make people
feel a little more tense.
I even added that fast heartbeat sound
just now, because when your brain hears
that it feels just as apprehensive as
if your own heart was beating faster.
There's a reason they use countdown
timers on bombs in movies.
And that's to create stakes and
heighten the urgency because
all of us really have a timer.
Each one of us.
Malcolm: Point Number Two
The Host: the problem is that it doesn't
always actually create that urgency.
Sometimes it has the opposite effect.
A watched pot, never boils.
The last half hour of the
worday is the longest.
And the real hack to making time
last for more than an eternity is
to be waiting in line at the DMV.
So why is it that numbering something can
both build a sense of urgency and boredom.
It is my purpose that
changes my perspective.
It is the fulfillment of my
purpose that contracts time
into an infinitesimal point.
It is the delay of purpose that
expands each moment into an infinity.
Voice of the people: Wait, what.
The Host: Okay.
I'll explain.
Let's imagine that I'm
hanging out at home.
My wife is about to run some errands
and ask me to get some chicken
out to thaw as she drives off.
I go back to hanging out.
I bet you can guess what happens.
Hannah: You forget until you hear her
driving back in and then run like a
madman to get some chicken out right
before you get busted for slacking off.
The Host: No, what?
No, I get out right away so I
can enjoy my time hanging out.
If I waited until the last minute,
it wouldn't even be thawed, right?
My guilty deeds would be laid bare before
my wife and my hidden sins would be
revealed in the light of her presence.
All of my days would dwindle
away in her fury and my years
would be finished with a sigh.
Because I have learned to number
my days and thaw that chicken.
If I had waited until the last
minute, then my wife would be
forced to wait until the sun runs
cold and the mountains crumble into
the seas for the chicken to thaw.
And I'd have to eat crackers for dinner.
From my perspective, time was limited.
Because someone was coming
back to check on whether or not
I was fulfilling my purpose.
From my wife's perspective, she
would be waiting on the laws of
thermodynamics in order to fulfill
her purpose in cooking frozen chicken.
Voice of the people: What
if I don't know my purpose.
The Host: Now you sound like my
kids, my wife could have told them
to get the chicken out to thaw, but
they still haven't cleaned their
room from when we told them to do
that last night or maybe last month.
But here's the big hook of this
episode and honestly, the whole series.
Your days are numbered.
But your group's days don't have to be.
Your family's days, don't
have to have an end.
With your friends, you have your
own personal sense of urgency
because of accountability.
Like in the last episode, And
your purpose is clearer because
it is in relation to your friends.
Sometimes the easiest
way to see your purpose.
Is to have the rest of
the puzzle put together.
The more pieces that already have a place.
The more clear the picture
and your place in it becomes.
Putting a timer on it, knowing your
days are numbered, gives you the urgency
to find your place in all of that.
But I'm not just a piece in a puzzle.
I have more depth and more dimensions
and thoughts and feelings, and that
makes our relationships so much more
complex and difficult and meaningful.
A family is far more beautiful
than a puzzle could ever be.
And a family or a society or a
group or a village, or even a
nation are all organic things..
If healthy and living their purpose,
their time can go on and on.
I have a family someday my time will come.
You can only eat so many breakfast
burritos before the laws of
biology catch up with you.
But my family will most
likely continue on.
My kids, my theoretical grandkids , my
even more hypothetical great-grandkids
will be my legacy and reflect our family's
values and purpose to some degree.
When I'm a part of a team doing
something great or meaningful,
it is a satisfying experience.
And for the best teams, if I leave,
they go on just fine without me.
And hopefully, I will be leaving
things better than when I started.
My family's days don't
have to be numbered.
My group, my community can go on.
Numbering
my days gives me purpose.
Numbering them together gives me time.
Bernard: Youâre saying a lot
of different things there.
Youâre saying that time goes by quickly
when I have to fulfill my purpose,
and time goes by more slowly when my
purpose is being delayed, and that
I have a finite amount of time on
my own, and an exponentially larger
amount of time when Iâm together.
What am I supposed to do?
First of all.
Great summary.
Second, let me tell you a story about
the longest and fastest day of my life.
This is my wife.
Hannah: Hi, it's nice to meet you.
The Host: We've been
married for a few years.
And one day, my wife informed
me that it was high time.
We started having babies.
I was a little apprehensive
about having babies.
I like kids.
I also wasn't feeling a particular
biological imperative to start
having kids, or at least I thought
I wasn't, but my wife did tell me
that I was mistaken about that.
Trying for a baby is
surprisingly stressful.
As each month passes, you start to wonder
if something is maybe wrong with you.
But before too much time, we
found out we were expecting.
And then we miscarried.
My wife was the nursery
director at a church.
She worked with babies all
day and moms and moms to be.
So this was not easy for her.
But we had a good community.
Some good friends who
came alongside of us.
This was all new to me, but
so many men and women shared
their own heartaches with this.
I learned that the rate of miscarriage
is 10 to 20% of known pregnancies
and likely even higher than that.
But this made things even more
stressful when we started trying again.
Eventually we did get pregnant again.
The first few weeks we spent
worrying , that we might lose the
baby before we even get started.
But we made it to the end of
the first trimester, which is
when most miscarriages happen.
That December we went in for our checkup.
We learned that our baby.
I had a terminal condition.
Called anencephaly.
That she would most likely live for just
a few minutes or maybe a day at the most.
We also learned that she was a girl.
Her condition meant that she would
survive the entire pregnancy, but
wouldn't live much longer beyond that.
She might not even survive the birth.
Our unborn baby had six
months to live in utero.
We decided to name her Abigail.
On, the day that Abigail was to be born,
we went into the hospital about 10:00 AM.
The C-section was scheduled for noon.
And we had to get in and then
get prepped before the surgery.
I can think of so many times
when two hours felt like forever.
But this time it flew by.
After all the tests and final
instructions, they took Hannah into
the operating room and asked me to wait
in the hallway for about 20 minutes.
Well, the previous couple of hours had
flown by this 20 minutes To stopped.
I feel like I crammed about three days
worth of prayer and those 20 minutes.
And I had never been so nervous
as I was at that moment.
Each minute ticking by was exhausting.
Would the baby be okay?
Would I be okay with Abigail's condition,
she had a strong chance
of not surviving birth.
Or only living for just
a matter of moments.
What if she died before I got to see her?
What if she lived for hours or days,
always just a heartbeat away from death.
I wanted to spend as much
time as possible with her.
But I would be so afraid to
sleep, knowing that she might not
make it through to the morning.
Finally I was told that I could come in.
They set me down next to Hannah's head
at the table with a short curtain,
separating us from Hannah's lower half
where the actual work was taking place.
After about 10 minutes worth of
nervous chatting, the doctors told us.
That our baby was born.
And I could come and see her.
Every hope and fear that I had locked in
in the back of my mind over the previous
six months suddenly crashed through.
Maybe.
God healed my baby.
Maybe she was healthy
and whole and healed.
God can do anything.
Maybe he would have mercy on me.
And then I saw her.
Um, Abigail was laying on a
table, surrounded by nurses.
She was being cleaned
and suctioned and alive.
But she hadn't been healed.
I fell in love.
And it was a new kind of love for me.
I have a daughter.
I loved her so much.
And I knew that she was going to die.
I'd never been so happy to see someone
and so sad that they were leaving.
The nurses wrapped her up and put Abigail
in my arms purple and sticky and gross
and beautiful and alive and dying.
Then I carried her over to meet her
mother who was so happy to meet her?
And she could only smile.
While, my heart filled
and broke and melted.
Our family was there with us.
Flown in from across the country to spend
that time with us, those few moments.
Abigail lived for 11 hours.
I would have been lost without my
wife or without our family, without
the loved ones, praying for us.
Around the world, honestly.
Abigail only lived that May 31st, 2014.
That one day.
But she changed our lives.
I am a father forever because of her.
I learned a new kind
of love because of her.
My purpose changed because of Abigail.
Since then.
We've gone on to have two more daughters.
I love them and get to
spend more time with them.
As someone has said, the days are long,
but the years are short and that's true.
And what else is true is that I don't
know how many days I will get with them.
Abigail.
I only got one.
Well, these other two who
knows, hopefully a lot.
But I know that just as I needed that
community, when Abigail was born.
I needed a community now to
help me be a good dad, a good
husband neighbor, coworker.
To spend more time on my faith.
To go down the wrong path, fewer times.
Or go down the right ones first.
Abigail's days were shorter
than my other daughters.
And shorter than mine.
But each of our days are numbered.
Our family lives on though.
The joys and heartaches
busy-ness and boredom.
The days are long and the years
are short numbering our days.
It gives us purpose.
Numbering them together gives us time.
So, what do I do?
Do I sit here and worry
about my numbered days?
No.
I'm going to spend less time
thinking about myself and spend
more time thinking about us.
Us, as a family.
As friends.
And a small group or a church.
When together we are a part of
something bigger and longer lasting.
Lasting longer even than
my whole individual life.
If I want more time, a lot more time.
Build something lasting.
Join together and marriage join a tribe
or a community be a part of a dynasty.
Make bigger numbers.
Your numbers are counting down.
But a family, a village
tribe, or a nation grows.
Make a little time to invest in others.
So that you can have a
lot more time later on.
I need those close relationships
to hold me accountable.
And I need them to make
time to help me be better.
And I need to make God the center of it.
He is the judge.
He's the one that numbers my days
and the one who loves me and us.
That's a lot, but it's
also all just one thing.
I don't have enough time to do everything.
So I need everything to just be one thing.
We are here to love and glorify God.
I have one small part in that.
And these others here.
They have their part too.
And we take care of each other.
And we make time for each other.
It turns out that you really
can make time for good stuff.
You just need a few good friends.