Five Ways to Redeem the Time
“Look carefully then how you walk,” says Ephesians 5:15–16, “not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of time, because the days are evil.” The word translated “making the best us of” is literally “redeem.” Redeem the time. Buy it back from the course of this world. As Calvin explains,
Everything around us tends to corrupt and mislead; so that it is difficult for godly persons, who walk among so many thorns, to escape unhurt. Such corruption having infected the age, the devil appears to have obtained tyrannical sway; so that time cannot be dedicated to God without being in some way redeemed.
While in no way exhaustive, here are five applications Christians might employ for buying back time for the purposes for which they were given it by God.
1. Know you are never going to run out of time.
You have eternal life. You are never going to run out of time. You not only will get to do, see, have, experience and enjoy all that you hope to. You will do that, and much more.
You are under no compulsion at all to grab in desperation all the gusto you can get now, before it’s too late. For those in Christ, there will never be a “too late.” Create some natural elasticity and margin in your life. Every minute need not be programmed. Life is not a project.
2. Remember that people are the objects of your Christian vocation, not the means.
The Christian in vocation is an ambassador dispatched from the King of all kings, cleverly disguised as butcher, baker or candlestick-maker—or Linux programmer, as it were. The demands of ultra-high performance (like task management), fast and uninterrupted flow of information, and the evergreen temptations of greed, lust and idolatry can cause you to see other people as, if not cogs in a machine, then as just nodes in a network, units of operation in a process or just a patch of code.
Try putting someone’s name in front of every task and appointment on your lists. Putting a name and a face to the activity might cause you to see your ministry opportunities more clearly.
3. Seek to de-automate your relationships.
Pursue good, old-fashioned, in-person friendships, not interactions on some user interface “wall.” It may come as a surprise, but you really have nowhere near as many “friends” as Facebook says you do. Spend time with people face-to-face and voice-to-voice. Visit. Call. Defy the filters. Come alongside, physically not just virtually.
Seek to see interruptions to your workflow as divine invasions, God’s placement of living, breathing, wonderful people on your path, according to his own plan, with laughing indifference to your own plans. It could be a God-sent angel who asks, “Do you have a minute?” or “Is this a good time?”
4. Detox on output, and thrive instead on the Greatest Commandment.
The Taylorites would have you focused on tasks, and you judge your progress against the shortening of the list and the quality of your outputs. Jesus would have you focus on him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and then on other people—not tasks.
Pray that he will lead you to the place at which your satisfaction flows from how well you know him, and how many other people you love and how deeply you love them.
5. Make the glory of God the goal of all your activity.
Aristotle posited that every activity has a goal. Taylor’s practice of scientific management posited that every activity yields a level of productivity. Paul exhorted that “whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
The goal of all your activity is neither purpose nor product; it is God. Whatever it is, do it to make much of God, not to get a promotion, publish the next book, craft the next algorithm, splice the next gene and so on. The products of your human work may all perish, but by God’s merciful grace, not all souls will perish. Life in Christ endures, forever. The sooner one starts living that life, and sharing it, the better.
