Time ...

How much time have you spent this week on what you claim matters most to you?

This question has been ringing my mind this week. The question is prompted by two things, a funeral and a lesson I will be teaching tonight. The funeral was last Saturday. I shared in the funeral of a great guy who had a major influence on me during some turbulent years of my youth. His name was Charlie. He was a leader in the church we attended and that my dad happened to be pastoring at the time. (That probably was a major influence on our attending that church.) Charlie was not a youth leader, he was not a young man at that time, but he influenced me in powerful ways. For one, Charlie showed interest in me. That wasn't easy given my attitude during most our years in this church. Charlie was positive most of the time, he had one of those smiles that could irritate you and cause you to smile along all at the same time. One of the most amazing things Charlie did was slap me on the back and encourage me. Sometimes it was a brief thing in passing and sometimes it was more in depth. But I always noticed. I knew he cared, even though he knew I wasn't doing a lot of things well at the time. He never shied away from me. I noticed. I also watched how he lived and what mattered to him. He had a saying that was brought up at his funeral. The saying was that "his feet would be parked under his family's table at night". Simple, but powerful as far as statements go. You see it determined which jobs he took and which ones he turned down. He grew up without a family and he was committed to be the husband and father that God wanted him to be for his family. He spent time doing what mattered most to him. His faith and his family were at the top of his priority list. So I have been thinking about where my time is invested.

The other influence on the opening question is the lesson I will be teaching tonight. On Sunday evenings I am teaching a study on marriage relationships. Tonight's lesson is about conversation and time. So I have been asking, where is my time being spent.

How would you answer that question? Where did your time go this past week? Where we invest our time says a lot about what matters most to us.