1/5/58

Another Year [Or, “A Few More Minutes”]

Scripture: Luke 4: 1-15

Text: Luke 4: 5; “...and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time...”

Haven’t you heard a little child plead for “just a few more minutes” at play before being sent off to bed? Or perhaps it is the folk who want the orchestra to play “just one more dance” before the party ends. It seems that a popular song of not-so-long ago was titled, “Give me five minutes more.” The song is probably so frivolous as to be well forgotten as it wears out. But the title suggests something that is not frivolous. For tremendous amounts of satisfactory accomplishment can be crowded into little fragments of time that are no bigger than minutes. And this is worth considering at the beginning of a New Year.

Minutes are a symbol of the rapidity of life. The pace seems slow when you think of ten years --- especially if you are a child growing up; or a youth impatient to get along with some cherished accomplishment. But when you think in terms of seconds, or minutes, you have an accelerated sense of the swiftness of time.

Minutes may symbolize the generosity of life. When you hear someone say, easily and glibly, “I don’t have time,” you may suppose that he is overworked. That may not necessarily be the case. For very often it is not that he is overworked so much as it is that he is undermanaged in the use of his time. From sunrise of one day until sunrise of another day, each one of us has 1,440 minutes of time. That is a generous allotment for our use, provided the minutes are intelligently accepted and arranged, and employed with proper industry.

Minutes may further symbolize the relativity of living. They are like distance which is relative according to our ability to reason. When I first lived in the Hawaiian Islands out in the Pacific, the 4,500 or so miles between me and the Dakota home of my parents meant something like two weeks of travel or waiting for mail. For some time now, that same distance is measured by about two days of time. And the trans-Pacific telephone nearly erases it!

Great joy will pack the hours together until they seem like minutes; while extreme suffering may pull minutes apart until they seem like hours. It was a dying queen who said to those in the room: “All of my possessions for a moment of time!” [Rev. W. D. Westervelt: “I asked the Lord for one more day.”]

The use we may make of the time which is impartially allotted to us is significant in the light of life’s rapidity, generosity and relativity.

The Duke of Wellington was analyzing certain victories which the British had scored over the French. Someone credited the successes to British bravery. The Duke immediately qualified that assumption by saying: “British soldiers are not braver than French soldiers; they are only brave for 5 minutes longer.” One may debate the merit of the Duke’s estimate. But his comment does point to a principle of action that often determines the difference between success or failure; that is, the ability to hold out, and keep persistent, for five minutes longer.

But suppose that we do have “five minutes longer,” five minutes of life at its ending, or five minutes before the sunrise stops and the lights go out, or five minutes more in the laboratory or the study. Are those minutes necessarily good or precious of themselves?

The minutes that the little child pleads for may, if granted, be robbed from the rest that is irreplaceably essential to his health in the form of refreshing and rebuilding sleep.

A man named Ezra, returning from captivity to the Holy City, Jerusalem, was appalled at the careless compromise of others who had returned earlier only to fall into the heathen ways of neighbors in Judah. He cries out: “And now for a little moment, grace hath been showed from the Lord our God.” But he goes on to point out that his people are not doing what will show their appreciation of God’s grace. While they have a priceless opportunity for recovery, they toss it away in careless neglect!

During World War II there were many folk who knew that the devastation and killing of war is an evil thing which can be justified only by the hope that a victory will give the victors a chance to build better living for hosts of people. We are constantly constrained to ask of ourselves: “Are we building a better world for all sorts of people in the precious time allotted to us by grace after the holocaust of war?”

Five minutes more -- or another whole new year, will have merit for us only in the use we make of that time.

The sentiment of the ditty titled, “Give me five minutes more in your arms” is not a tribute to love in its pure and abiding romantic form. It seems rather to reflect the crude and casual way in which the attraction between the two sexes is encouraged and indulged. As such, it is a poor sentiment. That which should be reserved for use as an expression of genuine love and trust between two people who respect and genuinely admire each other is made cheap by its casual and transient expression.

Further, the expression, “Give me five minutes longer” is a poor sentiment if it reflects the mood of procrastination. A common saying that many have learned from childhood is that “Procrastination is the thief of time.” It comes from the pen of an English author named Young who commented in this fashion: “Procrastination is the thief of time; year after year it steals, till all are fled, and to the mercies of a moment leaves the vast concerns of an eternal state. At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; knows it at forty, and reforms his plan; at fifty chides his infamous delay, pushing his prudent purpose to resolve; in all the magnanimity of thought, resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same.” Well, that is a dreary outcome of procrastination.

Some of us have a letter that should be written, perhaps to someone wronged by a careless or headstrong word. But each day finds us putting it off a little longer. Some of us have a book to read; a friendly call to make; a debt to pay. Some of us have a dedication to make to Jesus Christ; but we keep putting it off saying “five minutes,” or “five days” more, or another month.

An English prince was a procrastinator. He had long been the kind of fellow who put things off a bit. When he became an army captain in charge of troops in the Sudan, he had to deal with rebellious and fanatical tribesmen. One day, at breakfast, a courier rushed to him to tell him that dangerous native tribesmen were approaching to attack and that he had better get his troops away to a better position. “O wait for a few minutes,” he remarked, “we’ll have to finish breakfast.” But the breakfast was never finished. In less than ten minutes the tribesmen did attack and the whole company was wiped out. When the news reached England, the captain’s mother shook her head in sorrow. “I know exactly what happened,” she said. “He waited ten minutes!” The benefits of time are not for the procrastinator.

But they do accrue to the person who will persevere in good effort. To the one who can be “brave for five minutes longer” time becomes precious beyond price. It is a principle of resistance to hang on for a brave moment longer. It is the moment for dedication, for decision to join the church, for writing that letter of reconciliation, for organization of one’s life, for reading that book, for arranging companionship in the family so that its members are not “too busy” for each other.

It may be the means of enduring hardships that had seemed unendurable; for conquering the waste of fretting. Jesus laid out a plan for no siphoning off of precious energy in useless speculation when he said: “Do not be anxious, therefore, about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own anxieties. Enough for each day is its own trouble.”

A hospital patient had a good answer for a visitor who asked how long he would have to remain in bed. “O, only one day -- at a time.” That is a pretty good use of time that must be so occupied.

The “five minutes longer” or the “next year” are well used in the spirit of David Livingstone. Livingstone had been sent out by the London Missionary Society to the Bechuanas. But the field appeared too small for the force at hand. So Livingstone set out for another place, hoping for the approval of the Society’s directors. But he did tell them that he was at their disposal “to go anywhere, provided it be forward.”

It was a natural trait of Livingstone to go ahead. A man who had known him from youth said, “Now, after nearly forty hears, I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant getting there.”

Sometimes we practically break the speed limits getting nowhere. A good use to make of the time ahead of us, “five more minutes” or a new year of time, is to get somewhere with it. Even a small task, that fits into a plan of progress, is worthier than a larger task which does nothing after all.

Are you helping your church to go forward this year? Will your methods, your policies, your plans for it advance the cause of Christ in lives near and far? Are you eager to be of service in some significant endeavor?

There are men who are content to work in the Bechuana field even if it is overmanned, and who are too tired or timid to see anything big attempted. They will let well enough alone. But will you be one of those who will use 1958 to set out on something that leads forward? There is tremendous need for people who have a characteristic forward tread, who can stay only in those conditions that lead to larger and worthier fields.

In this spirit, may your new year, 1958, lived one day at a time (365 of them) be the finest, and best yet! Let each succeeding minute be splendidly Christ’s.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, January 5, 1958; also 1/5/64.