Time is the most precious gift
Time is the most precious gift you can give…
Dear Friends,
I hope you are as excited about the holidays as I am! We always spend so much time and energy preparing for our guests to arrive and put so much care into how everything is put together for everyone. When it comes time to have our holiday feasts and gatherings of all sorts, we can lose some of our time together by being on our phones.
Time is the most precious gift we can give because it is finite. Time’s scarcity makes it truly more valuable than anything else which is why when you give it freely it is the most precious gift you can give. Time is love because it is self sacrificial. My favorite gift my husband and I received for our wedding was the time people took to come and celebrate with us, the family and friends that lived close and those that came in from all over the country. The physical gifts that were given were wonderful but over time I realized the best gifts were family and friends giving us their time.
One interesting thing about time is how it relates to our attention. Attention like time is finite, you only have so much of it and you cannot give your full attention to more than one thing at the same time, despite what people might say. You cannot truly multitask and give each task your full and undivided attention, rather you are dividing your attention between all of the tasks you are attempting to do at the same time. This means you cannot look at or listen to something on your phone and play with your child and give them your undivided attention, you are in fact dividing your attention between your child and your phone.
Consider for a moment how much time we spend on our phones or screens of any kind? What could we be doing instead of looking at our screens? What if we spent that time looking into each other’s faces and engaging with one another, especially our children instead? Could we use some of that time to improve or even learn a new skill? I heard somewhere that it takes about 100 hours to become an expert at something. Did you know that if you dedicated 19 minutes a day every day for a year to something, like practicing the piano, by the end of that year you would have practiced for over 115 hours. Consider what you might do with that time, only 19 minutes a day. Would you spend that time on reading books for pleasure and education? Perhaps you could use it on exercise to improve your physical health or achieve a specific goal like running a mile in a specific amount of time. Maybe you could dedicate that time to reading God’s Word to grow stronger in your faith. What would happen to your relationships with your spouse, children, family or friends if you dedicated 19 minutes a day to building those, meaning that by the end of the year you would have invested more than 115 hours into those relationships? What wonderful goals! I recognize the value of technology but I also notice the perils of it in our day to day lives. I encourage you to try to use technology as a tool rather than a form of entertainment and distraction. I fall prey to the distraction technology provides and I will be working on limiting it as well. During this time of the year I always share my favorite video that can be watched on YouTube, called Look Up by Gary Turk. As I am writing this now November of 2024 the video is 10 years old but perhaps more relevant today than when it was originally made. I hope it can provide some encouragement to live in the present with your loved ones. I pray that you have a wonderful time with your family and friends over these next months and that you give them the gift of your time. I want to tell you that I am so grateful to you for gifting me with your time to read this blog post. Your Friend, Amanda
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