The Rhythms of Time

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of time. The more I investigate the concept of time, the more I tend towards the belief  that time is a spiritual phenomenon. I think so because it’s about the only gift from God given equally to all men.  There’s no questioning the fact that the smart use of time is vital to a life of fulfillment and impact.

I’ve already written so much on the subject of time and you can read them at the following links:

Time 1 Experience the thrilling realization that you can mould time to your advantage.
Time 2 Learn about the forces that can mould time.
Time 3 Discover time as an elastic intangible.
Time 4 Get introduced to the various time accelerators.
Time 5 More time accelerators.

In today’s post, I want to share inspiration from my New Year sermon – How To Number Your Days Aright – preached to members of my congregation here in Nigeria.

An Understanding of the times…

In 1 Chronicles 12:32, we read about the “Men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do…”  Notice the direct connection between an ‘understanding of the times’ and the ‘knowledge of what to do’.  This connection is vital to a life of success and achievements, after all, how would you know what you should do if you have no clues as to what time it is?

Solomon, the wise king of Israel writes,

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1

Clearly, there is a right and wrong time for every activity, in other words, there is a rhythm to time.

Failure is inevitable whenever you lack the understanding of the times, in which case your activities will be out of sync with the natural and spiritual rhythms of time.

To enjoy inner peace, fulfillment and prosperity, it is important that you understand the natural and spiritual rhythms of time and synchronize your life with them.

It is for this purpose, I believe, that the man of God, Moses, prayed the following prayer:

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” ~ Psalm 90:12

My New Year sermon, from which this post is excerpted was titled, “How to Number Your Days Aright” which was basically meant to inspire my congregation to synchronize their lives and activities more perfectly with the natural and spiritual rhythms of time.  An understanding of the rhythm of time will definitely enhance the quality of your choices and decisions in life.

Now, let’s gain this understanding from the Creator and Designer of time – God.

Your earthly time, though elastic,  is finite

In other words, you have a limited quantity of time to spend on earth.  The moment you use up this allotment, you go to ‘sleep’.  Sleep is usually used in the bible to symbolize death, as we see from the following verses:

“Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” ~ John 11:11 [Jesus speaking about the death of Lazarus]

Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep. ~ Acts 7:60 [Referring to the death of Stephen, one of the Seven Deacons of the Early Church]

So, sleep is symbolic of death – the cessation of all earthly activities; it means ‘time up!’

Sleep (death) marks the end of all earthly activities

The following verses are quite enlightening:

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.” ~ Ecclesiastes 9:10

In sleep, all earthly activities end, hence no working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

“As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.” ~ Jesus Christ, John 9:4

Your quantity of time expires in death, when you ‘sleep’.

Conversely, ‘day’ represents your allotment of time

From the verses quoted above, we should understand that the ‘day’ symbolizes the time of working, planning, knowledge, wisdom; it is the time allotted to us for fulfilling the purpose of God for our lives here on earth.

In ordinary terms, your ‘day’ refers to your life-span.

So, we can divide up our life-span after the order of the divisions of the natural day.

But first of all, how much is this life-span?

The span of our earthly lives…

“The length of our days is seventy years – or eighty, if we have the strength…” ~ Psalm 90:10

There you have it – 70 to 80 years, the length of a ‘full’ life-span.  Some folks are able to live more or less than this span, but that’s just about the average of a full life-span.

In terms of life-span, therefore, a normal human day would be 70/80 years.  I’ll use the average – 75 – for my calculations in this post.

Now, let’s split up this ‘day’…

The ordinary day has 12hrs of ‘day’ and 12 hours of night.  Jesus said so, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight?” in John 11:9.  Of course, we also know this to be the case.

Usually, we divide our daytime into 3 parts – morning, midday, and evening – each spanning about 4 hours.  Let’s now apply this division to a normal life-span of 75 years:

• Morning = 1 to 25 years. I believe this is the time for laying a solid foundation for every aspect of your life.  This is the period of fundamental learning, training, and discovery of purpose.  You should have discovered your purpose on earth and mastered the basic skills for fulfilling this purpose during the morning period of life.
• Midday = 26 to 50 years. This is the time of achievements and accomplishments.  You should have begun to translate the successful utilization of the morning period into tangible results and significant achievements.
• Evening = 51 to 75 years.  This is the time of relaxation and rest.  This is the period when you begin to actively hand over to the next generation.

A time for everything

What time of the ‘day’ is it for you?  Are you involved in the right activities for this season of your ‘day’?  Let this post inspire you to make the necessary lifestyle adjustments that will enable you get back into sync with the rhythms of time in your own life.