The first thing God did when He created the world was to, in effect, institute time. His Hand gave the first impetus to the pendulum that is the celestial clock. He set the whole universe to the Beat of His Heart as He gave form to the void.
Later, He made this earth where each day is uniform. 24 hours. No more, no less. It doesn’t matter what era you live in, who you are, how much or how little money you have, what status you hold in life, or even how organized you are. You can’t buy, sell or trade more than those few hours each day. Each child of God, even those who choose to deny that status, get exactly the same number of hours, minutes and seconds. What a great gift!
For many years, though, I did nothing but complain about the fact that I never seemed to have enough time. At last a counselor gave me the key to solving that quandary. In his wisdom he explained that, just as I have only 24 hours a day, I wake up each morning with a finite amount of emotional energy. Every morning when I wake up, I get another chance to choose how I’ll use it.
It took me years to come to understand what Dr. Smith meant. Slowly but surely, though, I’m beginning to grasp the significance of his statement. I’m coming to understand that it’s usually not the required daily physical activity that does me in, nor uses up my “time”. It’s what’s going on in my heart that’s the key to the effective use of the moments I’m granted. I can spend my time angry, resentful, spiteful, rebellious — all of which use huge amounts of my daily allotment of spiritual stamina. Emotionally I can reside in victimhood, workaholism, compulsive overeating, compulsive spending … well, you get the point. Either way, I’m choosing to drain my own existence, my precious time, dry.
Or — news flash from the New Testament via Dr. Smith — I can choose to live life with an attitude of gratitude, peace, forgiveness, obedience and service. The effect of this choice, though, is akin to depositing emotional energy in my daily bank. Trying not to sound preachy or anything, but it seems that it’s what I allow to reside in my soul on a daily basis that is the key to the effective use of my time. Surely God is sitting up there lovingly chuckling as I come to grips with all this. It isn’t that I need more time. I need an attitude adjustment about the way I chose to experience my time. I need — nah, I want — to choose gratitude.
Jackie Zimmerer is a wife and mother of four sons. She attends St. John's Catholic Church in the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas.
