Not A Trivial Pursuit
Some of you might remember the game Trivial Pursuit. It came out in 1981. The object of the game was to answer a correct question in each of 6 categories such as Geography, Sports and Leisure, History, and Science and Nature.
Some, well okay, most, of the questions are pretty obscure. For example, What does a heliologist study? (the sun) Or, What’s the singular of scampi? (scampo) Or, What is the crystal anniversary? Anyone here been married 15 years?
If you are an expert on trivia or, as I like to call it, useless information, you would probably do pretty well at this game.
Here are some more things you might like to know. (read list) There, now you have this vast amount of knowledge, now you know everything. You never know, it may save your life someday, knowing a cat has 32 muscles in each ear. Maybe it can win you some money on Who Wants to be a Millionaire or maybe Jeopardy.
We all have knowledge about something. We may even be somewhat of an “expert” on a subject. I have a lot of knowledge of things like sports nicknames or the roster of the ’69 Cubs. Really useful information, huh? I can tell you whatever you want to know about bears. All that knowledge and 50 cents will get me a cup of coffee.
You see, knowledge is a wonderful thing. But, it is one thing to be educated, to have knowledge. It is quite another to have wisdom. You see wisdom is the application of knowledge. Wisdom is knowing what to do with all of that stuff, that knowledge floating around in our brains.
Remember the story of Jesus going to visit Mary and Martha? He sat down to teach them and as he taught, Mary was sitting at his just soaking in every word. Meanwhile, Martha was out in the kitchen preparing dinner.
Martha got very upset because Mary wasn’t also in the kitchen helping her. So she comes to Jesus and complains “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” Jesus answered, “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen that which is better and it will not be taken from her.”
Martha knew (she had the knowledge) that God was in her living room but she didn’t apply that knowledge to make the right decision.
In the movie “Groundhog Day”, Bill Murray is a reporter stuck in a town in PA, covering Groundhog Day. He finds himself stuck in time, waking up every morning to the same day. At first he is horrified, but then he realizes he can take advantage of what he is already learned from living the through the day previously. Eventually he realizes he has the opportunity to "make the most of the day." (Erwin F. Goedicke)
He learned to take what he gained (knowledge) and apply it (wisdom).
An old bit of carpenter’s advice is: Measure twice, cut once. The more consequential an action, the more carefully it needs to be thought out. Wise people know it is never a waste of time to ensure accuracy.
The Bible doesn’t say, but I would guess that Solomon didn’t rush into giving his answer when the Lord said, “Ask what I should give you.” He probably carefully thought out what he would ask for.
An angel appears at a faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behavior, the Lord will reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Now before I tell you what the dean chose, let me ask you-what do you think he chose? Without hesitating, the dean selects infinite wisdom.
"Done!" says the angel, and disappears in a cloud of smoke and a bolt of lightning. Now, all heads turn toward the dean, who sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, "Say something." The dean looks at them and says, "I should have taken the money."
Regardless of his second answer about taking the money, the dean made the right choice. Beauty fades and money is spent or lost. Just ask Mike Tyson. I heard this past week that he lost most of the millions of dollars he’s earned in his career.
Wisdom is worth more than anything else you could possibly want. Why does Proverbs (written by Solomon) tell us that, whatever we do we should get wisdom? (Prov. 4:5-7) It’s because wisdom yields far greater benefits than material goods or comforts.
Prov. 8:22 – Wisdom comes from God himself. Wisdom results in understanding, Prov. 8:5, truth, verse 7, and righteousness, verse 8.
I think the key verses in our readings for today are 15-17 of Ephesians. “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of time, because the days are evil. So do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”
Paul makes a very important point in those three verses. He points out that every single one of us here this morning who are Christians are living our lives in one of two ways.
We are either living wisely, or we are living unwisely and foolishly. According to Paul, we’re either one or the other. I don’t really want to talk a lot about living foolishly as a Christian this morning. I always prefer to look at the positive aspect, the living wisely aspect. And that is really what this short passage is all about, how to live wisely as a Christian.
And to narrow our focus even more, we’re supposed to live “…as wise, making the most of the time…” Paul says we have to make the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Or as another translation puts it “Make the best use of your time, despite the difficulties of these days.” One of the differences between living foolishly and living wisely is what we do with the time we have.
A breakdown of the average life of 70 years goes something like this:
Sleep................23 years...........32.9%
Work.................16 years...........22.8%
TV....................8 years...........11.4%
Eating................6 years............8.6%
Travel................6 years............8.6%
Leisure.............4.5 years............6.5%
Illness...............4 years............5.7%
Dressing..............2 years............2.8%
Religion............0.5 years............0.7%
Total................70 years............100%
So, is this how we spend our lives? Eating for 6 years or spending 2 years getting dressed? We spend a third of our lives sleeping? Someone once told me that the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin living life. We need to start living our lives wisely. So how do we do that? Well, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
I think that clocks and watches lull us into a false sense of security. They have a circular face and they give the impression that time keeps on going round. Well it doesn’t. Once a minute is gone its gone and gone for good. We won’t have the same chances next year to make up for those we failed to take this year.
I’ve bad news and good news here. When I was an engineer, I did a lot of time management studies. I need to tell you, time management is a oxymoron. You can’t really manage time. You can’t delay it, speed it up, save it or lose it. No matter what you do time keeps moving forward at the same rate.
One enterprising group of college students tried to literally manage time, but in the end it came back to haunt them. At this particular university the rule was that if the professor had not arrived in class within the first fifteen minutes of the hour, class was considered a "walk" and the students were free to leave - with no penalties for missing class. The rooms in this school were equipped with the old style clocks where the minute hand mechanically ticked ahead after each minute. Some of the students discovered that they could cause the clock to jump ahead one minute if they hit it with an eraser from the black board. The professor of this class was not the most punctual so it became a ritual for these students to take target practice at the clock. After a few well-aimed erasers hit their target, bingo, 15 minutes had passed and the class walked.
At the end of the semester the final exam rolled around. The professor strolled into the room and passed out the test. He said, "You have one hour to complete it." He then proceeded to collect all the erasers in the room and gleefully took aim at the clock. When he had successfully jumped the clock ahead one-hour, the professor called "time’s up" and collected the exam papers.
The bad news is, you can’t truly manage time. The good is that you can manage yourself within the time you’ve been given.
The “experts” say that the average man will live to the age of 75. So if I live to be 75 years old, I have about 10,818 days left to live. That’s all, just 10,818 days left to live. So I need to manage myself within the time I have left.
But wait a minute. I may not have that many days left. I don’t have a guarantee of even one day more to live. In fact the Bible tells us not to count on tomorrow because tomorrow may not come for you or for me. Remember the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12? He had an overabundance of crops and decided to build bigger barns. Then he would relax, eat, drink, and be merry.
He was going to kick back and enjoy life but God told him, “This very night your life is being demanded of you.” All we have is right now. We have no guarantee that tomorrow will come for any of us. So our time on this earth is valuable because it is very limited.
There are 3,278 hours left in 2003. That is the same for all of us, there is no difference. What will make a difference is how we will use those hours that we have left.
The Bible tells us that life is like a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow, and for this reason we must be very careful how we live. Don’t live in the past because we don’t have rewind buttons. We can’t go back and replay our lives. Take the knowledge that each of you have, apply it with wisdom to make the most of the time you have left. Live each day to it’s fullest. Prioritize and remember what is really important. And, if you do that, it will not be a trivial pursuit.
1 Kings 2:10-12, 3:3-14
Ephesians 5:15-20
August 17, 2003
