It's About Time

There's a haunting episode of *The Twilight Zone* called "Time Enough at Last" that captures something profound about our relationship with time. In it, a bank teller named Henry Bemis loves reading but never has enough time for it. His boss threatens to fire him for reading at work. His wife destroys his poetry books. Then disaster strikes—a nuclear bomb drops while he's in the bank vault, secretly reading during lunch.

Bemis emerges as the last person alive. After wandering through the devastation and nearly ending his life, he discovers salvation: the public library, broken apart but filled with all the books he ever wanted to read. He carefully catalogs them by year, planning decades of uninterrupted reading. Then, as he bends to pick up the first book, his glasses fall off. He steps on them. They shatter.

The episode ends there, leaving us to contemplate a chilling question: What happens when we finally have all the time in the world, but we've lost the ability to use it?

Two Ways of Understanding Time -

The ancient Greeks had two distinct words for time, each revealing something essential about how we experience our days.

"Chronos" refers to chronological time—the ticking of the clock, the turning of calendar pages, the measurable march of seconds into minutes into hours. Chronos is quantitative. It's the time we're always racing against, trying to control, afraid of wasting. It's the time that makes us say "time is money" and "time waits for no one."

Chronos time can consume us if we let it. We become obsessed with productivity, with checking items off lists, with measuring our worth by our efficiency. We live in constant anxiety about whether we have enough time.

But there's another kind of time: "Kairos".

Kairos is qualitative time—the opportune moment, the right season, the appointed time for something significant. Kairos isn't measured; it's experienced. It's the breakthrough, the insight, the decisive opportunity that appears suddenly and demands our attention.

Kairos moments are the ones we often miss because we're too focused on chronos. They're the chance to offer kindness to a stranger, to really listen to someone who needs to be heard, to pause and appreciate beauty, to forgive, to connect, to love.

Think about this past week. What kairos moments did you miss? When could you have been gentler, more present, more compassionate? What opportunities to make a memory passed you by while you were checking your phone or rushing to the next appointment?

The Wisdom of Ecclesiastes -

Ecclesiastes 3:1 declares, "There is a season and a time for everything under the heavens." The passage goes on to list twenty-eight instances of the word "time" in fourteen contrasting pairs: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to weep and a time to laugh.

This ancient wisdom reminds us that life unfolds in seasons. Not everything happens according to our schedule. There are moments for action and moments for rest, times for speaking and times for silence, seasons of joy and seasons of grief.

The text suggests that these seasons aren't random but part of a larger divine order. Each season—even the difficult ones—presents an opportunity for spiritual growth. The key is to live faithfully in the present moment, trusting that there is purpose even when we can't see the full picture.

What Really Matters -

One of the most sacred privileges is sitting with someone in their final days of life. In those holy moments, something remarkable happens: the conversation shifts.

People don't talk about their degrees or their professional accomplishments. They don't mention how many boards they served on or what schools they attended. They don't discuss their financial portfolios or career achievements.

Instead, they talk about time spent with loved ones. They remember family vacations, graduations, awkward dinners where the meal was burnt but everyone ate anyway. They recall first dates, weddings, bringing babies home, watching children leave the nest. They speak of the joys and struggles of relationships, of moments of connection, of love shared and received.

In those final hours, value is weighed in presence, not presents. In presence, not possessions.

This is the truth Jesus revealed in Matthew 6:21: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Ten simple words that expose everything. What we value most is where our heart is, and where our heart is determines how we spend our time.

There's a joke about a man reporting his missing wife to the police. The detective asks for a description. The husband can't remember her height, weight, eye color, or what she was wearing. But when asked about her car, he rattles off every detail: "2023 Tesla Model X SUV, solid black on black, 2,600 miles," complete with VIN number and every feature.

The officer's response? "Don't worry, sir. We'll find your car."

We make time for what we treasure. Our attention, actions, energy, and time flow toward whatever our heart is tied to.

The Dash -

Walk through any cemetery and you'll see headstones with names, dates, and inscriptions: "Loving Mother," "Beloved Father," "In Memory Of." But there's one element we rarely notice: the dash.

That small horizontal line between the birth date and the death date represents something enormous—it represents a life. It represents all the time that person had on earth. Every choice they made. Every relationship they nurtured or neglected. Every moment they were present or distracted. Every opportunity they seized or missed.

Under normal circumstances, we have no control over the date on the left side of the dash or the date on the right side. But the dash itself? That's entirely ours. That's the time we've been given to steward.

So here's the question that should keep us awake at night: What are you doing with your time in the dash?

Living With Intention - 

Time is a river, constantly flowing. You can never step into the same water twice because what has passed will never return. This reality should inspire us not to anxiety but to intentionality.

Managing our time purposefully enables us to lead meaningful, balanced, fulfilling lives. It means being present in chronos time while remaining open to kairos moments. It means accomplishing our responsibilities while staying sensitive to unexpected opportunities for connection, kindness, and love.

It means remembering that the real treasures aren't the possessions we accumulate but the memories we create with the people we love.

Because in the end, when our own dash is complete, what will matter isn't how busy we were or how much we achieved. What will matter is how we loved, how we showed up, how we used the time we were given.

The good news? If you're reading this, you still have time. You're still inhaling and exhaling, which means you still have the opportunity to make different choices about how you spend your dash.