I just heard the story of a woman who was talking on the phone with her husband, when he suffered a major heart attack and died. Wow! It takes your breath away.

We all live as though we have all the time in the world. We often procrastinate thinking, “I’ll do that tomorrow.” But what if there is no tomorrow?

In 1972 Jim Croce wrote the song, “Time in a Bottle.” At the time he wrote the song he was thinking of abandoning the concert scene and focusing his attention on writing short stories and screen plays. He planned to retire from public life to spend more time at home with his wife Ingrid and son AJ.

On the night of Thursday, September 20, 1973, Croce and five others were killed when their chartered plane crashed into a tree during takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Croce was 30 years old.

Time cannot be kept in a bottle or a box full of wishes. Time is a precious commodity, granted to us by our Creator and intended to be used to live the “kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

I recently retired from fulltime pastoral ministry and time has taken on a new meaning in this later season of life. It is not sad or morbid, but it is different. It is a season of change and reflection. For more than forty years life was lived somewhat at the beck and call of others. Vacations were postponed for funerals, or abbreviated to officiate a wedding. Not bad things at all. Just the way life is lived in the local church.

In this season however, one is forced to reevaluate time. Like Jim Croce, we may have important plans for the present and future, but the reality is our times are in God’s hands. And for the record, God does not reckon time the way we mortals do.

There are two Greek words for time. Chronos refers to sequential, chronological time while Kairos means the right or opportune time. God works in both spheres. God is fully cognizant of the fact that we are bound by twenty-four hour days, but within the constraints of Chronos, God is at work creating the right opportunities for us to experience God’s purposes.

Our lives may be long or short, but in God’s time (Kairos), we are blessed with limitless opportunities to live as the people of God in this place. We are often so bound by Chronos that we fail to see God at work in the season of life in which we find ourselves.

An obsession with time, leads us to a spiritual blindness to what God wants to do in this season of our lives. God’s timing is perfect. Hear Paul’s words to the church at Rome. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6 emphasis added).

As human beings we allow the press of time to control our lives. There is a meeting to attend, an appointment to keep, a call to make. Over and over each day we succumb to the god of time.

Our lives would be much richer if we lived with the words of Jesus in front of us rather than the calendar.  “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:34).

A few of the lyrics from “Time in a Bottle” to remind all of us to live fully into the Kairos of God.

If I could save time in a bottle

The first thing that I’d like to do

Is to save every day ’til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true

I’d save every day like a treasure, and then

Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time

To do the things you want to do once you find them