Every four years, we get an extra 1440 minutes added to our lives – a full day.
What will you do with your extra day this year?
If you’re like me, you’ve already filled it up with plans and you may not have even thought too much about it. But these extra minutes today remind us of the importance of using time wisely on a regular, daily basis.
When we trifle away time, we are wasting a valuable resource that can’t be retrieved. Once the 1,440 minutes are gone each day, they are gone.
Psalm 90:12 speaks to this: Teach us to realize the brevity of life,
so that we may grow in wisdom.
As we grow in understanding of how precious time is and how brief life really is, we gain wisdom.
We gain the wisdom of being able to articulate the important things in life.
We learn what we truly value and what we want to put first.
If how we spend our time really matters, then each and every minute matters.
I’ve been reading Great Leaders Have No Rule by Kevin Kruse, and am inspired to start taking note of those times when I’m wasting minutes. We should crowd our calendar with things that matter to us. If we value time with family, it should be officially on our calendar. If we value time in spiritual growth, prayer, Scripture reading and journaling should be in our calendered routine. If we value exercise, we should have the minutes each day blocked out for it.
(And so that you’re not stressed out by this concept of rigid calendering, you can also – and should also – include time for thinking, doing nothing, relaxing, sabbath, etc. These things will more likely happen when you schedule your life diligently.)
I always take courage from a phrase I heard a long time ago: “There is always enough time to do God’s will.”
And this extra day helps put that in perspective.
In a sense, you have a free 1,440 minutes today – how will you use them?