The Value of Time

As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away.
–Psalm 90:10

Have you noticed during the last few weeks all the people making their prognostications about what they think is going to happen in the coming year? Many people are trying to predict what is going to happen in the next 12 months. Where will the Dow Jones Industrial Average be at the end of the year? What is going to happen in our country and around the world this year? Will we have another terrorist attack or natural disaster?

With all these prognostications, I thought I would enter the fray as well. I am going to make a prediction about 2018. But unlike these other predictions, mine is 100 percent guaranteed to become true. You can count on it. Are you ready?

Here is my prediction for the coming year: something unexpected is going to happen in your life in the next 12 months. You can take that to the bank. Something unexpected is going to happen to you in the next 12 months. Twelve months from today, if you are still here, you are going to look back and say, “I did not see that one coming.” Life is filled with uncertainty.

Some people respond to the brevity of life and the uncertainty of life with a hedonistic attitude. They think, “If life is just a vapor, and if life is uncontrollable, then why not just eat, drink, and be merry? For tomorrow we die.” But that was not Moses’ conclusion in Psalm 90.

Because life is brief and life is uncertain, Moses talked about the value of time. “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away. Who understands the power of Your anger and Your fury, according to the fear that is due You? So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:10-12).

I like The Living Bible’s paraphrase of Psalm 90:10-12: “Seventy years are given us! And some may even live to eighty. But even the best of these years are often empty and filled with pain; soon they disappear, and we are gone. Who can realize the terrors of your anger? Which of us can fear you as he should? Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are; help us to spend them as we should.” Moses was saying that it is important for each of us to realize the value of time.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “It’s About Time” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2011.

Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, IL 60188.