Inspiration often, perspiration less often, and celebration least often.

"This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a beautiful Friday evening and my wife and I are sitting on our porch enjoying a cool breeze and surprisingly temperate weather for St. Louis in late June. As I was sitting here rummaging through the beginning of a new book, debating with myself if I really wished to spend an hour becoming acquainted with a new book on such a fine early evening while my famous breakfast casserole was baking in the oven. The book failed to hold me attention and so I took up my Mac and thought if the written word wouldn't suffice perhaps writing words about the past week would be a delightful use of my time this restful Friday evening.

I came upon Emerson's quote while I was perusing the Ancient's anecdotes on the passage of time. 

The quote reminds me that time is neutral. It cares not who uses it, nor for what purpose, for it has no morality, or rationality that might cause it to choose a favored person or purpose. It's very nature is as a force without stability. It changes constantly, never lingering, never regretting the passing of itself, nor the recreation of itself in the next instance. Times never stops, never retraces it's steps, nor rushes forward to reach a better place. It is content to merely pass by, taking with it bite-sized portions of our finite life. 

I occasionally hear people bemoan that they don't have "enough" of time. As if it were possible to be robbed of one's allotment of time and so therefore find yourself with a shortfall of the needed commodity, or perhaps it is thought that one ought to have had the foresight to save one's portion of time and so be able spend it later in a larger quantity, just as a fiscally responsible person might save money for that unfulfilled expensive dream. 

But 168 hours of time is all the time that is allotted to every human being who will successfully survive the full term of time we called this week. It passed remorselessly, taking with it the potential opportunities and tragedies that this present week had held out as possibilities to us before it began. Now it's approaching passing promises to take those unrealized possibilities to a place beyond our present reach. 

Last week almost every slot in my calendar was full of meetings. I filled the 168 hours with frenetic labor, meeting many people and creating a well stocked calendar of activity. This week only the first two days were full of such meetings, the third was half full and the last two days were full only with empty slots of time unspecified for its proposed purpose. Oddly, though not shockingly, the last two days have proved the most productive. My world could simplistically be divided into three phases of time usage:

• it begins with 50% Inspiration, 
• followed by 40% Perspiration, 
• and ends with 10% Celebration. 

Last week was mostly perspiration with a little celebration. This week was initially perspiration followed with a large dollop of inspiration, with celebration remaining only as a hoped for result of a well used week.

Time passed me by this week and as I reflect on my use of it, I find that I'm very content with what I did with my allotment of 168 hours of time. If all goes as planned I will have developed a reasonable reservoir of future funding for our ministry, created a modest reservoir of potential personnel to actually do the ministry, and fine tuned the methodology they will use in the ministry. And while there are still 29 hours remaining of this week's allotment of time, I feel confident that I won't waste those hours either as their purpose has been reserved for the production of peaceful repose.

How did you use your time this week and how do you view it's passage?