Bjcorbin's Blog

Regular church attenders often hear of the need to be good stewards of the things God has given them.  This reminder generally comes right around offering time, and usually refers to how their money is spent.  But in my lifetime, I’ve found that there are things which are far more valuable than money, and two or those are time and energy.  And while we wouldn’t dream of feeding dollar bills into a shredder, I would submit that within our culture we frequently do this with our time and energy.

We’ve long been a society that spends a significant amount of resources on recreation and our hobbies (e.g. hunting, fishing, boating, motorcycling, skiing, classic cars, season tickets…).  And with all of the advances in technology, we have a created a million new ways to keep ourselves distracted and non-productive.  Estimates indicate that roughly 40 million people will spend almost two billion dollars, and countless man-hours, to play Fantasy football this year.  While industry metrics indicate that almost 165 million people will spend a measurable portion of their day playing video games on their smartphones (or other electronic devices).  In the 2^nd quarter of this year, over 304 million people spent an incalculable amount of time broadcasting their reactions, opinions, and comments on Twitter.  And Instagram recently reported that they now have over 400 million users, filling cyberspace with selfies and other superfluous material.  All of this, while marriages, and children, and communities, deteriorate from neglect.

The Apostle Paul said that a good soldier doesn’t involve themselves in civilian affairs, and as children of God, we must remember that our days on this earth are numbered.  We can ill afford to piddle away that time on useless distractions, while the work of the kingdom goes undone.  To whom much is given, much is required.