Time Keeps Ticking Away

In many sports there is a critical coaching skill called clock management. What it means is that in addition to the skill of your players, the coach also has to make calls that expands the time benefit for his/her team and a time liability for the opposing one. For instance, if you're team can score at will needing only a small amount of time, but your defense can't stop the other team from scoring, then you might be better off dragging your feet for a while before you score until there is not enough time for the other team to score.

Well, as a pastor/leader/coach this is a skill that I am constantly trying to develop, and here's why:

1. We are engaged in a struggle that is constant. Everything in our world is tending toward chaos and dissolution. Physicists call this the law of entropy or the second law of thermodynamics. It means that there is constantly diminished potential. There is no day where things stand still. There is no time when time is not a constant issue needing our attention and management. Our objective doesn't take a break, and our path to achievement can not rest either. We are either progressing toward our goal, or we are losing ground and moving away from attaining it. There is not middle ground.
   
2. We are engaged in a struggle that is time sensitive. I'm involved in a spiritual quest, and because I have biblical guidance I know that the last days began on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Therefore time is counting down until the last day. And should that day come after my death, then I'm working down to a date certain when I will be laid to rest. It reminds me of the poem by Praying Heart, "We've only one life, it soon will be past, only what's done for Christ will last."
   
3. We are engaged in a struggle for which we are responsible. One day we will give an account for our time. We will testify, and the books with the records of our life will testify for us. We will give an account of our time on earth. Did we redeem the time? Did we make the best use of our time for eternal merit?

Okay, so all that to say that yesterday I picked up my 2011 calendar. I have had seasons of my life where I was very well managed in my time, and seasons where I've been much more scattered and haphazard. I have found that managing time through technology (Outlook, iPhone, etc.) does not work for me. I have friends who have mastered that system, but for me a pencil and a paper calendar helps organize my brain. I also write out lists of tasks to accomplish and cross them off. And I write in my calendar after the fact to keep a record of my time. I have them from years past. I will probably never use them again, but when I stand before God to give account of my time I want to make sure my books are in tune with the books he's looking at. ;-)

Oh dear, look what time it is.
--Ben