Time Is What You Make It

Time Is What You Make It

Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

Chuck Colson tells the story of visiting Mississippi’s Parchman Prison, where he found most of the death-row inmates killing time by watching TV.

But in one cell a man was sitting on his bunk, reading. As I approached, he looked up and showed me his book—an instruction manual on Episcopal liturgy.

His name was John Irving. On death row for more than 15 years, he was studying for the priesthood. John told me he was allowed out of his cell one hour each day. The rest of the time, he studied—preparing to meet Christ or serve him here.

Seeing that John had nothing in his cell but a few books, I thought, God’s blessed me so much, the least I can do is provide something for this brother. “Would you like a TV if I could arrange it?” I asked.

John smiled gratefully. “Thanks,” he said, “but no thanks. You can waste an awful lot of time with those things.” For the 15 years since a judge placed a number on his days, John has determined not to waste the one commodity he had to give to the Lord—his time.^a

Kind of gives you pause, doesn’t it? A prisoner on death row who doesn’t have time for television! Wherever you spend it, time is truly what you make it. Sally Cunneen, writing in The Christian Century, tells a story of how reflecting on the principles of E. F. Schumacher, statistician and economist during World War II, spurred her own thinking about counting her resources rather than simply living with them.

Evaluating my everyday use of time and resources, I noticed how often I tended to count and measure—abstracting from a situation rather than living it. Take the routine of soft-boiling an egg. After the water came to a boil—a goal for which I would wait impatiently—I would slowly count to 100 while the egg cooked to the desired firmness. In this numerical mode, I would keep an eye on the clock and sometimes snap at my husband, absorbed in the newspaper.

Thinking about it, Sally came up with a new way of timing her egg cooking: she began to say three Hail Marys after the water began to boil. “Then,” she says, “I use the boiling time to place myself in touch with earlier generations of cooks who measured their recipes with litanies, using time to get beyond it.”^b

So what about the two of you? Are you simply passing time when you could be making it better? After all, time is what you make it. Don’t allow your next twenty-four hours to pass without making them what you want. Consider how each of you can help one another do just that.

Where, except in the present, can the Eternal be met?

—C. S. Lewis

^a 91

^b 92