One Portion of Time Which Every Christian Holds Dear

The past couple of days have been spent out of the office and at the hospital. One of the ladies in the church has been ICU and we’ve been busy ministering to the family. It has been a blessed time – to see the testimony of a dear sister, who although has flesh of frailty, has a spirit devoted to the glory of God. It has been a delight as well to care for her boys, whose spirit and strength also reflect parents who want to glorify God. I even bonded up-close and personal with the youngest (baby Grant – a few months old). When Laura (my wife) took the older boys to the hospital to see their mother, I stayed at the house to watch the baby – who proceeded to gift me with a messy diaper and a hungry belly. It was the first diaper I had changed in about 10 years. I think that we (baby Grant and I) are now tight.

My reflection today comes from the ongoing series our Home Bible Fellowship group is working through – “The Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character” by Gardiner Spring. In the 13th chapter entitled, Devotion to Divine Honor and the Glory of God, was the following statement that went well with my last post (actually my wife’s) on preparing for Sunday. Consider these words -

No child of God can be habitually idle, or waste his time in empty relaxation and vain amusements. Show me the man who lives at his ease, and feels that he has time enough for anything and yet devotes it to nothing, and if to anything, to that which is foreign to the business of a creature who is the possessor only of one short life, and that redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and for which he is shortly to give up his last account, and I will show you a man who is a Christian only in name. The professed Christian who attends the dance and assemblies and parties of pleasure, whose precious time is consumed and killed in the perusal of novels, romances, and plays, who is nowhere so happy as at the theater, the horse race, or the card table is a miserable deceiver and more miserably deceived. But it is not the mere omission of crimes of this aggravated sort which constitutes a Christian improvement of time. The state and growth of grace in his own soul, the spiritual condition of his family, his friends, his neighbors, the church, and the world, together with the ignorance, the immorality, the vice, the want, and suffering of his fellow men, these will redeem his time from idleness from amusements, and often from secular labor. There is one portion of time which every Christian holds dear. The Sabbath is his delight. He anticipates it, he enjoys it, he reflects upon it as the “sweetest day of all the seven.”

Oh, may we delight in our opportunity to gather with the saints for worship. May other things be considered of less importance and may we long for the fellowship of the saints.