Unmanufactured Tissue Of The Universe!" Joshua ...

“Unmanufactured Tissue of the Universe!” Joshua 10: 12-15 Key verse(s): 13b: “The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day.”

“What ‘cha doing?” The old man said to the young man as he sat lazily next to an old haystack at the side of the road. “Just killing a little time!” was the glib response. “How do ‘ya know when it’s dead?” The old man, hands in pockets, shot back. “Don’t guess I really know.” The young man quickly added. “I’m just trying my best to keep it from moving I guess!” “I see.” The old man smiled. “Sounds like a lot of work to me.” He began to move on down the road. Turning around for one last look, he nodded and shook his head. “Seems to me that you’re better off letting it go and working it to death than trying to kill it.”

Time. Probably the most precious gift that we possess yet it’s the one thing most disdained in life’s incessant drive to waste it, squander it, kill it, and lose it. It’s the one thing we are most jealous about owning, yet it’s so fleeting that the moment we grasp it is the moment it is lost. We beg for more of it like a second helping, the first helping having grown cold and useless because we did not consume it when it was hot and ready to sustain us. We treat is like a slow moving ox, switching it with our petty wants and finally whipping it angrily with our fears because it moves too slow for our ambitions. Yet, we whine and complain when our destination is reached and we are not ready nor willing to accept where it has led us. We are often convicted to take time, but are seldom willing to return it.

Perhaps the reason we abuse it so is that, since it is not something we can hold in our hand, we find it difficult to apply a proper measure to it. Despite the fact that watches and clocks gauge it, because they don’t store it, amplify it or in any way modify it, we have a hard time understanding that, like a commodity, time is something that is expended and must be regarded as diminishing always to a point of depletion. When you come right down to it, most of us simply don’t understand the nature of time as God has designed it to be. It exists as a commodity, as something very real and tangible. Time is something that He created for us. For before time, there was, of course, no time. Nevertheless, the nature of this most precious gift it elusive to our understanding.