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By Elsa Sichrovsky
Not long ago, I confided to a friend that I felt overwhelmed with stress and anxiety over my work. She suggested that I spend more time meditating on God’s goodness and studying His Word as an antidote.
“But I don’t have time!” I protested.
“What do you mean, you don’t have time?” she queried with a twinkle in her eye.
“I mean that I don’t have buckets of time on my hands!” I retorted, annoyed and puzzled.
She smiled meaningfully. “Oh, so you don’t own enough time? You may as well say that you own sunlight. But you’d never say that, because you know that God made the sun. Why don’t you think of time as a gift or a loan from God, rather than viewing it as something that you own?”
“Well, no... it’s just that... um...” I was stumped. I’d never realized that I had been thinking of time as something that I “own.” But it was true. The idea of God lending orgiving me time seemed absurd to me; rather, I was accustomed to thinking that I sometimes generously gave Him precious portions of my time! The more I thought about it, the more I saw how deeply ingrained this faulty idea was in my consciousness.
It dawned on me that if I really believed that all things were made through God and that without Him nothing was made that has been made,1 I would have to concede that He made time as well. And as the Creator, He owns all of His creation, including time.
The next day, my friend and I talked some more. We discussed how having a possessive attitude toward my time had led to me focusing solely on my own ideas, goals, and desires, effectively pushing God out of my decisions. Without His help to streamline my schedule and lifestyle, I was struggling to keep up with my work. No wonder I was stressed and felt that I didn’t “have” time for communing with my Creator. If I would admit that my time is not my own, I would be consulting and following God’s advice a lot more—and becoming more efficient and calm as a result.
After I started to implement my friend’s suggestion, I noticed that my flawed reasoning about time had also been influencing the way I viewed my family, job, possessions, and many other areas of life. For instance, I would react peevishly toward family members, friends, or co-workers if they interrupted “my” work—whether at home or in the office—to ask for advice or assistance. Instead of offering my help cheerfully and eagerly, I would struggle with feelings of irritation and a sense of injury over the chunk of “my” time that I felt this person was taking from me. Needless to say, I was often too busy fuming over “my” lost time and hoping to return to “my” important work as soon as possible to give someone else’s problems and concerns my full attention.
The more I reflected on it, the more I realized how wrong my reasoning was. If Jesus were to appear in physical form and say to me, “Put your work aside and help_____,” I would drop my work and obey without delay because I am a professing Christian who has given my heart and life to Christ, and I truly want to emulate Him. Why, then, was it so hard for me to willingly obey when He would use less dramatic methods to call me to help others? I saw that instead of feeling resentful, I needed to learn to gladly obey and then trust that He would help me to complete my interrupted work in His time.
I also came to realize that the word “my” had soaked into deeper corners of my heart. Rather than being thankful for and generous with all that I had been given, I was selfishly grasping onto all that I felt I was entitled to. Whenever God did not seem to be answering my prayers or granting my desires, I’d fume over why “my God” wasn’t doing what I wanted, when I wanted it—as if He were my errand boy. Yet God is my Master, the one who bought me with His blood and who showers me daily with unmerited grace and blessings. It is I who should lovingly serve Him, share His gifts with others, and gratefully receive all that comes from His hand—both the good and seeming bad.
As I spent more time reading and meditating on God’s Word, I found King David to be an inspiring and convicting example of having the right perspective on personal ownership. Since he was a monarch with dominion and authority over a vast spread of land and people, it might have seemed understandable if he had allowed possessive attitudes to creep into his heart. After all, as king of Israel he held the power of life and death over his subjects. But King David fills the Psalms with such declarations as, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it,”2 and, “The heavens are yours and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.”3King David deeply understood that God ultimately owns everything and everyone, even though He may give us small portions of His earth to manage for His glory.
The process of rewiring my mindset has not been easy, and it is far from finished, but I am learning to wholeheartedly affirm with the psalmist, “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.”4
Footnotes:
1 John 1:3.
2 Psalm 24:1.
3 Psalm 89:11.
4 1 Chronicles 29:11 (King David’s declaration of thanksgiving).
By Elsa Sichrovsky
Not long ago, I confided to a friend that I felt overwhelmed with stress and anxiety over my work. She suggested that I spend more time meditating on God’s goodness and studying His Word as an antidote.
“But I don’t have time!” I protested.
“What do you mean, you don’t have time?” she queried with a twinkle in her eye.
“I mean that I don’t have buckets of time on my hands!” I retorted, annoyed and puzzled.
She smiled meaningfully. “Oh, so you don’t own enough time? You may as well say that you own sunlight. But you’d never say that, because you know that God made the sun. Why don’t you think of time as a gift or a loan from God, rather than viewing it as something that you own?”
“Well, no... it’s just that... um...” I was stumped. I’d never realized that I had been thinking of time as something that I “own.” But it was true. The idea of God lending orgiving me time seemed absurd to me; rather, I was accustomed to thinking that I sometimes generously gave Him precious portions of my time! The more I thought about it, the more I saw how deeply ingrained this faulty idea was in my consciousness.
It dawned on me that if I really believed that all things were made through God and that without Him nothing was made that has been made,1 I would have to concede that He made time as well. And as the Creator, He owns all of His creation, including time.
The next day, my friend and I talked some more. We discussed how having a possessive attitude toward my time had led to me focusing solely on my own ideas, goals, and desires, effectively pushing God out of my decisions. Without His help to streamline my schedule and lifestyle, I was struggling to keep up with my work. No wonder I was stressed and felt that I didn’t “have” time for communing with my Creator. If I would admit that my time is not my own, I would be consulting and following God’s advice a lot more—and becoming more efficient and calm as a result.
After I started to implement my friend’s suggestion, I noticed that my flawed reasoning about time had also been influencing the way I viewed my family, job, possessions, and many other areas of life. For instance, I would react peevishly toward family members, friends, or co-workers if they interrupted “my” work—whether at home or in the office—to ask for advice or assistance. Instead of offering my help cheerfully and eagerly, I would struggle with feelings of irritation and a sense of injury over the chunk of “my” time that I felt this person was taking from me. Needless to say, I was often too busy fuming over “my” lost time and hoping to return to “my” important work as soon as possible to give someone else’s problems and concerns my full attention.
The more I reflected on it, the more I realized how wrong my reasoning was. If Jesus were to appear in physical form and say to me, “Put your work aside and help_____,” I would drop my work and obey without delay because I am a professing Christian who has given my heart and life to Christ, and I truly want to emulate Him. Why, then, was it so hard for me to willingly obey when He would use less dramatic methods to call me to help others? I saw that instead of feeling resentful, I needed to learn to gladly obey and then trust that He would help me to complete my interrupted work in His time.
I also came to realize that the word “my” had soaked into deeper corners of my heart. Rather than being thankful for and generous with all that I had been given, I was selfishly grasping onto all that I felt I was entitled to. Whenever God did not seem to be answering my prayers or granting my desires, I’d fume over why “my God” wasn’t doing what I wanted, when I wanted it—as if He were my errand boy. Yet God is my Master, the one who bought me with His blood and who showers me daily with unmerited grace and blessings. It is I who should lovingly serve Him, share His gifts with others, and gratefully receive all that comes from His hand—both the good and seeming bad.
As I spent more time reading and meditating on God’s Word, I found King David to be an inspiring and convicting example of having the right perspective on personal ownership. Since he was a monarch with dominion and authority over a vast spread of land and people, it might have seemed understandable if he had allowed possessive attitudes to creep into his heart. After all, as king of Israel he held the power of life and death over his subjects. But King David fills the Psalms with such declarations as, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it,”2 and, “The heavens are yours and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.”3King David deeply understood that God ultimately owns everything and everyone, even though He may give us small portions of His earth to manage for His glory.
The process of rewiring my mindset has not been easy, and it is far from finished, but I am learning to wholeheartedly affirm with the psalmist, “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours.”4
Footnotes:
1 John 1:3.
2 Psalm 24:1.
3 Psalm 89:11.
4 1 Chronicles 29:11 (King David’s declaration of thanksgiving).
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