"The time?" The man glanced at his invisible watch on his arm and then back at me with a goofy, toothless smile plastered on his bearded face. "Why, the time is now, youngster!" He said grinning, a hearty laugh escaping through the hole where his teeth should have been. Then, he walked away leaving me behind unsure of the time and even more unsure of his sanity.
Though... Perhaps he was right on the matter. The time IS now, the time WAS now a minute ago, and the time WILL BE now in a minute, and so on. Since this is unarguably the case, why are we so often caught up in the times and what everyone ELSE is doing? Why do we worry and put so much effort into planning elaborately, or dwelling on the past, when we are losing out on what is happening right NOW?
Guilty as indirectly charged, I personally spend too much time dwelling on the past, my mistakes, and, on the upside, joyful experiences that I wish I could relive. What I don't realize, however, is that by being so caught up in the past, or in many cases the future, I am personally engaged in wasting the present time that has been given to me.
The all too familiar saying, "you only live once", or as the current generation knows most popularly, "YOLO", is the world's way of saying life is too short to waste time so live in the moment before it's gone. The only part of that saying that I agree with is the part about wasting time. Before our eyes, time is running out.
In the Bible, it says in Matthew 24:36, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only," Now, for the people with an absurd amount of clocks in their living room, they may always know the time, but they do not know the hour in which the Lord is to return.
Jumping down a couple of texts, it says in Matthew 24:43, "But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into."
Verse 44 says, "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."
Simply put, we don't have time...to kill time.
In 2 Thessalonians 5:2 Paul writes,"For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night." Don't dwell in the past. REMEMBER the past, but please, please, please, live now.
