Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Some years ago, at work, we were discussing MP3s and how you could find old songs on the web. This was before YouTube. Someone mentioned that she’d like to find Who Knows Where the Time Goes. It doesn’t seem so long since I had that conversation but wow! – it’s 23 years! Who knows where the time goes 😀.

Only this morning, I saw a quote by Robbie Williams, where he couldn’t believe how the time was so short between being 5 and 51. I remember starting in Irish Dunlop in Cork as a 16-year-old apprentice maintenance fitter in 1978. Shortly after, one of the older men was retiring. He focused on me, being probably the youngest employee in the company, and said that my retirement would come too. And it pretty much has now 😀. Irish Dunlop closed in 1983, so I sometimes wonder if I might be the last employee alive someday.

But that’s life itself. The question relates to specific activities. Obvious ones are work activities, where I was under time constraints. I might need to hit a deadline for Friday 5pm and the time just flies. And occasionally I’ve been in situations where we ran out of work for a few days and the time just drags. Even if I’m told I can do whatever I like, it’s still the same. When you’re geared up to work, you just wanna work.

Another example is public speaking. I don’t do much of that nowadays, but I always aim to keep it short. If you have someone like the Apostle Paul come and speak , you’re delighted to have him give a long sermon. But even Paul went on too long for some. In Acts 20:8-10, we read about Eutychus, who fell asleep because Paul went on and on. He actually fell from a third story window, died, and had to be raised from the dead.

Evangelicals tend to criticize Catholic and liberal Protestant churches for their short sermons, but the answer to that isn’t quantity. It’s quality. There isn’t anything in the New Testament that says that a sermon should be an hour in length. I don’t do much speaking nowadays, but if I do, I try to follow the advice of an old friend and keep it to 20 mins. If I do lose track of time, it extends to 30 minutes at most.

And another answer would be writing, especially answering the Daily Prompt.

I only recently discovered the Daily Prompt. I didn’t join WordPress.com to practice my writing skills. I just wanted to create a little Christian website to spread the good news, and hopefully it’s doing that to some extent. I completed the site content, and then I noticed the Daily Prompt. And having discovered the Daily Prompt, I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying it. And it also enables me to read the thoughts and opinions of others around the world. And I do lose track of time with it. I also lose track of time creating a diary or chronicle of my life. I wrote all about that in the Luxury prompt a few weeks ago.

I would like to pray so much that I lose track of time, and also to lose track of time when I’m reading. But that doesn’t happen, at least not at the moment. I can lose track of time talking to humans, but I wonder how many people lose track of time talking to God. Well, on this side of heaven, perhaps prayer is more like writing a letter than having a conversation, but as I said, if I can lose track of time writing my blog, perhaps I could do the same thing with prayer. Maybe I should write my thoughts as I pray, as if I were writing a blog post. It might be worth a try.

Psalm 39:4
“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered—how fleeting my life is.”

James 4:14
“Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”