Value of Time | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1875

Value of Time.

He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out that plan, carries a thread which will guide him through the most busy life; the orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light, which darts itself through all his affairs. But where no plan is laid—where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents—all things lie huddled in one chaos, which admits neither of distribution nor review.

The first requisite for introducing order in the management of time is to be impressed with a just sense of its value. Let us consider well how much depends upon it, and how fast it flies away. The bulk of men are in nothing more capricious and inconsistent than in their appreciation of time. When they think of it as the measure of their continuance on earth, they highly prize it, and with the greatest anxiety seek to lengthen it out; but when they view it in separate parcels, they appear to hold it in contempt, and squander it with inconsiderate profusion, at the same time complaining that “life is short.”

Among those who are so careless of time, we cannot expect to find order much observed in its distribution; and, by such fatal neglect, how many materials for severe and lasting regret are they laying up in store for themselves! The time which is suffered to pass away in the midst of confusion, bitter repentance seeks in vain to recall. What was omitted to be done at the proper moment, arises to be the torment of some future season. Manhood is disgraced by a neglect of youth. Old age, oppressed by cares that belong to a former period, labors under a burden not its own. At the close of life the dying man beholds with anguish that his days are finishing, when his preparation for eternity has hardly commenced. Such are the effects of a disorderly waste of time.—Phrenological Journal for October.