“How many stones there are scattered about! Millions, billions, and we tread upon them without even noticing them. Yet gold is collected in tiny grains, and one gram of gold costs an enormous amount of money, as a single grain is not enough. So here, we also have time, which just like gold, is something precious. Therefore, let each of you keep to a firm rule that we treat it reverently. If we work, work, if we pray, pray, if we rest, rest. But nothing should be done senselessly, stupidly.

‘To kill time’ is a frightening expression. The words are correct, but also frightening, for time is life. And if we kill time, if we waste it, we kill our own life. Let us test ourselves, think, try to see that nothing ever transpires in vain, in idleness, in futility, in mediocrity.

And finally: when the Apostle tells us, “Redeem the time, for the days are evil,” the words should teach us to distinguish what is the main thing in life, what is the most important, from what is less important. The main thing is what makes us people, what we will carry over to the other side, the characteristics which remain with us when we are old, decrepit, dead in body but eternal in soul. The main things are that which each of us collects as a treasure in this our life. All of the rest but serves that end. We eat, we clothe ourselves, we work – all in order to support life, so that the spirit might grow, for without that goal, how are we any different from any animal or tree that takes nourishment, grows, and multiplies?
So, redeem the time for the sake of your soul, and in your life, treat it as a great gift from God. I know several people who were gravely ill, and then found that the Lord had granted them additional time. How they treasured it, how they were thankful to God for allowing them another year, two years, or some other indeterminate span. It was then that they were sharply aware of time, as one should be. So why should we wait for some grave danger or sickness? How much better to hearken today to the Apostle’s words, “Redeem the time, for the days are evil.””

– Parish Life, 2019 from St. John the Baptist Cathdral in Washington, DC

***Now and then we include a particularly thought provoking or inspiring excerpt not from one of our regular ‘Elders’***