You Can't "Save" Time

One of the relentless things about life is that it is passing. Time spends itself no matter what we do with it. It moves at its own pace, and we can’t “save” any part of it. The only part we play in its passing is the purpose to which we put it. We can waste it or use it well. We can fill it full or leave it empty and idle. We can use it for the right things or for the wrong things. And since we can’t “save” it, since it is going to pass at its own pace anyway, we had just as well decide to make the most of it.

Young people sometimes let the best years for practice and preparation slip by. And perhaps most of us who are older have realized later in life that some things would have been much easier for us if we had taken time for them when we were younger.

Increasing responsibilities force us more and more to care for pressing problems rather than pursue our own preferences. More and more we are crowded into making a living, with less and less time for preparing to make one. And it is discouraging when a man with heavy obligations must try to acquire the training that he could have had and should have had in his youth.

Of course many men have recovered from a late start, successfully and heroically⎯and it can and will be done by many more. But often, much of what we have to do could have been done easier earlier. And in looking back we can sometimes see how much time we wasted in doing things that didn’t mean much.

Time is much like manna: We can’t hoard it. We can’t save it. The Lord allots each day its own supply. We can use it as it comes or let it waste away. And in making our choices we must remember along the way that if we choose to do some things, we choose in effect to pass up other things⎯because time it too short to do everything we would like to do. Time is the very essence of all our opportunities. And we had better do earlier the things that are easier to do earlier, and not forever be living our lives just a little too late.