Valuable Time

"I mean, you're out here giving of your valuable time on a Saturday..." the journalist teased a response. But somewhere in the back of my mind the idea of time and its value was teasing me. Our conversation continued, we exchanged information, and she walked off to speak with others who were "giving of their valuable time" that day. Being left with more than a few moments to think, my thoughts finally came together, and here's what came to be...

What gives time value? After all, time is nothing more than units of measurement strung together to create larger units of measurement. Seconds become minutes become days become decades. Is there value in the ticking of a clock or the turning of a page? Time gains value through what we do with it. If we're spending the day doom scrolling, is there value in that? Or do we look back at those units of measurement and determine we have wasted them? If we spend a morning having coffee with friends or cleaning the park or flipping mouse-shaped pancakes for our children, those moments become more than mathematical increments; those moments have gained value.

The night before my family and I and others met that Saturday morning, our youngest and I read Matthew 6:19-21:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Treasure. Treasure in serving others. Treasure in smiling. Treasure in standing for what is right. Treasure in taking the Gospel wherever we go; in being the light of the Gospel to a dark world, a world hurting and broken, a world looking for answers and shouting its fear. Treasure that draws our hearts even more deeply into itself. The more we give of what we ourselves have received, the more we fall in love with the Giver. When we regard ten minutes as an opportunity to encourage a neighbor, that is treasure. When we consider an afternoon to be a park weeded and made beautiful for others, that possesses value. When we view years as training up our children, kissing their boo-boos and stoking their imagination, we cannot place a price tag on that. When we count months or years as the privilege of caring for a loved one with dementia, we understand the value of that time the moment our loved one is gone. Therein lies the value. Not in the seconds or minutes or days themselves, but in what we will do with them. And in doing something eternal with those increments, with the rise and fall of the sun again and again, with the blare of horns and the falling of confetti every 365 days --in doing something of substance with what we have been given, we make valuable time. It is the very giving of time that makes it what it is, treasure. Without the giving, minutes are nothing more than groups of sixty seconds strung together, an hour is nothing more than 1/24 of a day; time remains nothing more than units of measure. Giving of our "valuable time" is only possible because it has been given. To others, for others, and even on Saturdays.