A Waste Of Time

I used  take my digital alarm clock to my fitness club when I used to swim which was daily. I swam by minutes and needed some sort of timer. I won't lie- I don't buy expensive time pieces for a number of reasons but I needed something. This about a predecessor of my current clock. It's from July 25, 2009.

I finally did it. After weeks of abuse, I killed my digital clock. It was so good to me. It glowed in the dark, letting me know what time it was in the middle of the night. The alarm was faithful to ring on the rare morning when I failed to wake up on my own. It kept the minutes I ran in the pool each day, dutifully sitting right by the water's edge. It let me know the time as I drove across several states since my Toyota has no clock. It wasn't expensive, just five dollars at Wal-Mart, and I treated it as such, even filling it with used AA batteries. The mistreatment started soon after I bought it. I forgot it once as I left the pool. Fortunately, one of our maintenance men was swimming with his family and he returned it to my apartment. I kept dropping it as I finished my water running, and the batteries kept falling out. At first, the numbers popped right back on but as the drops became more frequent, they faded for extended periods. Once, I almost went to buy another but as if on cue, the time reappeared. Its resiliency was amazing. Yesterday was the final blow. As I waded into the pool at 5:30 A.M., I neglected to remove the clock from my trunks and it was immersed into chlorinated water. That was it. It still glowed when I pushed the snooze button but water had penetrated the inner workings and it died. Early this morning, I returned to Wal-Mart and purchased another clock, this one a $5 TIMEX. In her last act of giving, my old clock relinquished her batteries and gave life to her replacement. Maybe you had to be there but it was an emotional moment for me.

It's likely most of us have had relationships like I had with that timepiece. Maybe it was with a friend or romantic interest or maybe even a family member. We were careless and selfish and the other bore the brunt but they kept taking us back time after time. There were bumps and bruises but they, and I hesitate to invoke the line from the old TIMEX commercial, 'took a licking and kept on ticking.' Until one day, they didn't. The hurt was too great and the damage was irreversible. Sometimes, we reach the point of no return, the way I did with that clock. I didn't mean for it to end up that way; I just didn't care enough to prevent it from happening. I know I treat the Lord that way, too, with carelessness and indifference. We know from verses like 2nd Peter 3:8 that time is inconsequential to the Father, at least in the way we view it. ( 'With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.') But, there is a correlation in my life between how much I love something and the time I spend with it or on it. Maybe I saw the clock as replaceable but friends are not and family is not and most certainly, the Lord is not. Did I learn anything from my experience? I've taken very good care of my new clock but you know what they say; 'TIME WILL TELL.'

Applicable quote of the day:
"Clocks will go as they are set, but man, irregular man, is never constant, never certain."
Thomas Otway

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
E-mail me at shawley@westburychristian.org