"If We Live To 70"

  Let me make a brief observation about our time and see what we really do in our lifetime. We all have been given an equal portion of time. No one has less or more than another. We have 24 hours in the day and 365 days a year (except leap year which adds one)!

  Let's use 70 years of age as the average life span. In those 70 years we will sleep 23 years of our lives based on sleeping 8 hours each night. Over that same 70 year span you will spend approximately 14 years working, 6 years eating and 5 years traveling. Let's take it a little further. Let's add watching television since it has become such a great central part in the lives of many. It is said from a recent poll (and I'm not too trusting of polls but we will use it as a base) that the average American watches 6 hours of television each day. I will adjust that to 4 hours per day since 6 seemed a little high to me. That amounts to 28 hours per week, 1460 hours per year and in a 50 year period that would 72,000 hours of television watching. In just 50 years that is more than 8 years of televsion viewing!

  Let's compare the above with our spiritual lives. If we were to begin at birth (I am reaching for the highest impact to make a point) spending five minutes each morning and evening in prayer (which is more than most) and three hours per week in worship/Bible study (which is more than some), by the age of 70 we would have invested a total of just over 20 months of our lives! Let's add an additional three hours per week in reading our Bibles at home. That would make our total amount of spiritual food and gain a total of 3.6 years by the age of 70! That's the amount of time we would devote ourselves to knowing the Lord and growing. That's rather eye opening.

  Our children are being raised on a daily diet of self with an increased time spent on pleasure. How careful are we being with our lives and our children's lives? How serious are we about the spiritual matters of God? Do we really desire to grow spiritually? The days are evil and time is fleeting. Understanding the will of the Lord is the greatest blessing we could grasp (Eph. 5:15-17).