Can you teach me about tomorrow
And all the pain and sorrow running free?
‘Cuz tomorrow’s just another day,
And I don’t believe in time.
Hootie and the Blowfish
I recently celebrated by 47th birthday. Once more the space rock I’m riding on has returned to the point in its orbit at which I was born, and once more I was alive when it happened. That’s always neat. The more my life changes, the more amazed I am that every October 12 the shadows will fall in exactly the same places at the exact same times as they do on that day every year, and that night the stars will be in exactly the same places in the sky as they are every other October 12 of my life. Time is relentless in its predictability.
And yet. Last year at this time I was eating free at some of my favorite restaurants, just as I do the week of my birthday any other year. Sorry to say, I think I’ll have to skip the all-you-can-eat Brazilian superspreader-event buffet this trip around the Sun. My youngest started middle school this year, and has yet to set foot inside her school for class. I am pretty sure at this time last year, during the annual ritual sacrifice of a Bleu Ribbon Burger (no tomato) at Red Robin, that pretty much none of the twentytwentiness of the past several months—including, apparently, Red Robin dropping the Bleu Ribbon Burger from its menu—had occurred to me as even a remote possibility.
Time is relentless in its unpredictability.
Time is Ticking Away
Time limits me, and reminds me of my limitations with every tick of the clock and turn of the calendar. It hurries me, and it stops me dead in my tracks; either way, time humbles me—every time.
Like money, time can stretch only so far. Dave Ramsey can help me stretch my money by imposing organization and teaching self-discipline and eliminating waste. The same is mostly true of time…but there is one important difference: They’re still printing more money, but they’ve stopped minting more time.
“He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11
I can always find ways to get more money. I could get a second job. I could hold a yard sale. I could take out a loan. I could buy lottery tickets (and hope I get lucky). I could sell a kidney. I could rob a bank. (I never said all these ways were going to be good.) But no matter how smart or organized or self-disciplined or anxious or rich or handsome or handy I am, I can’t earn or buy or borrow or steal one second of extra time. What I’ve got is what I get.
And part of the fun is I don’t really know how much time I’ve got. It’s locked in a vault somewhere and nobody ever gave me the combination. I can make some reasonable guesses on a very general time scale—the likelihood is that I probably have many years left—but I can’t see how much sand is in the top half of the hourglass. I could be hit by a truck tomorrow. And having been literally hit by a truck just last year, not much reveals your mortality quite like the difference a random quarter-second can make between extra innings and game over.
Time—one of the most uncertain and most limiting factors I face as a human being—is humbling like that.
Tick, Tock, Tickety-Tock
The problem of too many tasks and not enough time has plagued me for—well, a long time. For almost as long I’ve struggled to find a system to make the best use of my time. Part of the problem has been finding a system that is not itself a time-suck. Another problem is finding something that is flexible enough that it can accommodate the variety of scheduling scenarios I face.
I may have stumbled upon an answer in bullet journaling. If you are unfamiliar with the world of BuJo, here is a short overview. I’ve tried other things that I wound up mostly hating and never sticking with, but I actually look forward to sitting down with my bullet journal for just a few minutes at the beginning and end of each day. It is a little like having a coloring book for my life. It helps me think through my time, keep track of ideas and insights, and process my experiences in a visual, efficient, and organized way.
Bullet journaling helps me plan my time, but also lets me keep track of how much time I spend on things. And since I habitually underestimate how long it will take me to do stuff, knowing how long I actually need to do the things I do is very useful information. The next time the planet returns to this spot in its orbit and I have to do this or that task again, I’ll be much better prepared to plan for it.
Writing things down forces me to think about things more thoroughly, and also helps me to remember them better. For this reason, I have combined bullet journaling with daily personal devotions. Sifting through a book or section of Scripture a few verses at a time—verses that I not only read but also write down in my daily log—helps me to stay disciplined and consistent in my reading and focused spiritually during my day.
Time limits me, and reminds me of my limitations with every tick of the clock and turn of the calendar. It hurries me, and it stops me dead in my tracks; either way, time humbles me—every time.
Here’s the greatest insight bullet journaling has revealed to me: I am busier than I had even realized. I’ve always known that I am busy, probably too busy, and there are seasons where it feels like almost every minute I have has been subleased to some task or another. But now I have a better idea how many plates I have spinning, how often I am a slave to the clock and the calendar, and how often things I did not plan on or plan for intrude. I’m also more aware of how much time I spend on the wrong things, and my need to occasionally make the plan of the day “Nothing. Do ‘nothing’ today.”
Eternity in My Heart
My bullet journal reminds me that time is finite, and so am I. That’s humbling. But God is not finite. Being infinite, He is beyond time. God created time, and is not bound by it. That’s awe-inspiring.
And the really weird part is that God did not ultimately make me for time. He made me for eternity—because he made me for eternal relationship with Him.
The Teacher knew it. “He has put eternity into man’s heart,” Solomon wrote, “yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” Because God has given us a heart that was meant for Him, and He is eternal, we’ll never be satisfied living in time. We can’t be. Everything here is eaten by rust and moths eventually; sooner or later everything we love more than we should will be stolen by thieves or decay or by time itself. Time makes us increasingly restless, all the more so the more we realize we don’t really fit here.
Every day, every hour, every moment…they are gifts. I need to use them well. But they also remind me neither to despise them nor to love them too much, because every day, hour, and moment is meant to point me to their Giver.
The Friday Blahg 