Killing Time
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Ideas have consequences. So do "improvements" on ideas. What time is it? Go ahead, check it out. Chances are those few of you who bothered to check didn't lose a lot of time doing it. Most of you either looked up at a clock in the room, or twisted your wrist for a peak. If you're a real whiz you looked at your VCR and saw something other than 0:00 blinking at you. But go back in time, just a bit, and what do you suppose you'd have done? Perhaps you would have looked out a window and said something like, 'Late morning" or early evening." And you probably wouldn't have minded your comparative lack of precision. The clock or watch, we thought, came to serve us. Instead we find that we are serving it.

A large part of turning something into a commodity is to quantify it, or measure it. The screen saver on my computer, a gift from a friend, tells me how many months, weeks, days, working days, and minutes until the new millennium. 611,060 minutes for those of you counting at home, at least right now. Time, because it is now a commodity, and not merely a frame for our existence, must be used efficiently. Waste not, want not, after all. And how do we know if we're using it efficiently? That's the funny thing. It seems the more desperately busy we get, the more frantic we are about time, the more we waste.

If you've ever moved from north to the south, as I did, moving from Florida to Virginia, you'll know what I mean. Long after you got used to the accent, long after you've learned not to put syrup on your grits, you'll still probably be annoyed at the pace. Go into the hardware store and instead of saying "May I help you?" so you can find those wing nuts and get moving, the lady is liable to ask, "And how are you doin' this fine mornin?", and make each vowel take an eternity. "Fine' you'll answer like a Yankee, and then she'll say, "Can't wait to get home in this sun and pull some weeds. Looks like my maters are coming in strong." And soon your face will be the color of ripe 'maters.

I would argue that passing the time of day is not only not a waste of time, but probably a far more valuable investment than that project you need the wingnuts for. You'll just get all angry and flustered when something happens (like your children come and "steal" your time when you're trying to put together their swingset. Some gratitude they have.) That swingset is going to rust and fade away. The lady behind the counter is going to last forever. I know, I know, you hardly even know her, so who cares? And isn't that the point? You'll certainly never get to know her if all she ever says is, "Third shelf on the left." Instead you'll rush home, get frustrated with the swingset, then your kids, all so you can get your work done in a hurry and the kids in bed all before The X Files comes on, so you can relax and really enjoy life. Wake up. The truth out there is that you have become the X files.

Our machines have turned us into machines, teaching us that the important thing is not what we are, but what we are doing. They are like the serpent in the garden, making patently absurd promises. The devil calls them "time saving devices." Try going into Walmart to get your wingnut. First, you can't find it, and no one-else knows where they are. The help is too busy to help you. When you make your purchase, its driver s license and social security number, waitng for the call to go through to Visa central to see if your credit is good, then the computer has to send a message to Arkansas saying your local store has one less wingnut, oh, and tells the computer that you for sure need to get the next hardware flyer from their marketing department. Where does the time go?

It has been attributed to the great southern agrarian Andrew Lytle, though I have never seen the research, that we are just spinning our wheels. He claimed that if we treat the time we spend in earning the money and doing the work necessary to keep our cars going as travel time, even in the car we average about four miles an hour. There's real progress for you. And we wouldn't even know we were late, if we didn't have these little time pieces telling us when to do what. They tell us when to get up, when to eat, when to work, when to stop working, and when to go to bed. You tell me who is the boss,

We need to spend more time on our being, and less on our doing. And that means standing still. That means looking like you're not doing anything. If you look in your daytimer more often than you look in your Bible, that's a sure sign of trouble. Busy is as busy does, as one man almost said while passing the time of day at a bus stop. We need to think deeply enough about time that we remember the things that don't stop with time, other people. Because right now counts forever, we dare not be so desperate to fill it. We must take the time to contemplate it. Spend a day, a week, a month without your watch. What's the worst thing that could happen? Time won't stand still, but if you're blessed, maybe you will.