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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Tim Howe

What Are You Spending Your Life For?

I'd like to talk to you this evening about a simple question.

It was with medical students and dental students, university students, that I first formulated this talk, But those of us who have gotten further on in life and have spent a little more of it, shall we say, perhaps it's even more important for us.

The first 2 are from Henry David Thoreau.

He's well known on the East Coast, particularly in Maine where I'm from, because he spent a lot of time in Maine.

It is thought that he wrote this poem about the biblical character Nebuchadnezzar.

The last 2 are written by Abraham Heschel in his book, The Sabbath.

But I would like you to ponder these quotes with me.

I drink at it, but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.

Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

I would drink deeper fish in the sky whose bottom is pebbly with stars." and this 1 also from Thoreau, a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.

We don't often define wealth in those terms today, particularly I would guess in this part of the country.

You may have heard the adage, he that dies with the most toys wins.

Certainly not true if you're the offspring of that person and have to get rid of those broken toys.

Thoreau said, a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

Can you let things alone and still see yourself as a valuable person?

I met a traveler from an antique land who said, too vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.

Near them on the sand half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things.

The hand that mocked them, the heart that fed, and on the pedestal these words appear, my name is Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair.

Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sand stretch far away.

What will be left of your life a thousand years from now when the wreck, all that's left, whether it's big, colossal, or small, What will be there when all there is is lone and level sands?

In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space.

And when he's using the term space, he's talking about stuff, things.

To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective.

Yet to have more does not mean to be more.

The power we obtain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time.

And then speaking of the Sabbath day, specifically, although it applies to all of our lives, he writes, he who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil.

He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the fury of acquisitiveness, and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.

He must understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man.

Are you embezzling your own life by the way you're spending that time?

Have you detected the thin current of time sliding rapidly away?

What things are you spending your life, your time on, that are embezzling your life?

Do you realize that there's no such thing as free time?

And please don't let me hear you say, I've got time to kill.

For time is all expensive, all of your days and mine were purchased at a terrible price.

A little time in which to decide if you would like an eternity of it.

The psalmist writes, actually, Moses wrote this likely near the end of his time in the wilderness with the sheep.

He thought he was coming to the end of his life.

The days of our years are threescore years and 10, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." In Solomon writing, in Proverbs says, wisdom is the principle thing.

Therefore get wisdom and with all thy getting, get understanding.

Are you gaining wisdom as you tweet and Twitter and Facebook and check the weather and the news?

What are you buying with your time, with your life?

Take a look at your day, how much time is spent on things that from the perspective of eternity have very little value.

Time is the only currency that's really real.

A character formed according to the divine likeness is the only treasure that we can take from this world to the next.

And John writes, Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.

But We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Are you spending your time, your life, to become like Him?

Christ, as recorded in the book of Mark, chapter 8 says, For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospels, the same shall save it.

For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Many of us, As we went through Loma Linda, accumulated a fair amount of debt.

And we got out and we started working to rid ourselves of that load.

And kept on working because we thought that money was a nice thing.

But is that a good thing to embezzle your life for?

As the Apostle Paul said, the things that are seen are not as real as the things that are unseen.

In 2 Corinthians 4, the last verse, he mentions that.

And then I would have you for a moment consider this way we're spending our life, particularly those of us in health care, from a different perspective.

According to a study published in June of this year, the number 1 cause of personal bankruptcy in this country today is medical bills.

1700000.0 cases of bankruptcy were directly from medical bills.

Most of them were on the working class who had insurance, but their resources were not enough to pay for the co-pays and the part that the insurance did not cover.

But this underestimates the true number as the number 2 cause of bankruptcy is credit card debt and a large percentage of that was secondary to medical bills.

So how do you as a health care provider feel about looking forward to or in my case looking back on a life of earning a relatively good income off the backs of personal misfortune and often personal tragedy.

Is that the way you really want to spend your time?

Doing good and getting paid well for it is certainly better than doing evil and getting paid well for it.

But if you go out these doors and turn to the left, walk a few yards down the sidewalk, you'll come to a sign and on it is the words Loma Linda University and under that it says, continuing the healing, the teaching and healing ministry of Jesus.

But is what we're doing really accomplishing that goal when it results in 2000000 cases of personal bankruptcy.

Are we doing the right thing with our time?

Are we training to become medical missionaries or medical mercenaries?

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What Are You Spending Your Life For?

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