Stop for just a second and ask yourself: what is a week of your life actually worth?

We only have 4,452 weeks from the moment we're born until our 85th birthday (if we're given that many years).​

Just...let that sink in. We have fewer than 5k weeks in an entire (generous) lifespan, and yet, sometimes we just let a "bad" or "off" week (or several) slip away without seriously evaluating underlying causes and lessons we could be learning.

Now, don't misunderstand: sometimes a week that's way more heavy on rest, fun, or flexibility is needed. Sometimes, crises (internal and external) endow a week with a heavenly purpose that we cannot immediately grasp from our point of view in the moment.

But are we really grasping that there are only 936 weeks from the moment our child takes her first breath to the day she's graduating highschool? That we have only 156 weeks we get to invest into the hungry mind of our toddler before his little brain networks solidify? That in just 520 weeks an entire decade of marriage is in the books? 

Are we really grasping the fact that this upcoming week is either laying another brick in the foundations of the future we're called to help build—or that it's stuffing the foundations with wood, hay, and stubble, and all manner of things that (thankfully) will not last in the refining fires of God's redemption?​

How quickly the weeks just tick away on our calendars.

This post is in no way designed to inspire fear: we cannot attack time with a death grip and try to slow it down or expect it to develop our personal histories exactly as we wish. However, we are called to accept the reality that time is the most precious resource we are called to steward. Unlike money or energy (two things we tend to be wayyyy more careful about spending), time is not renewable. A week that passes can never be brought back again. This week, once lived, becomes part of our personal (and family) history.

While we have eternity in Christ to explore His creation, expressing ourselves creatively as an amen to His Image in us, and basking in the goodness of communion with and in Him—our time on this side of glory is much more limited (and yet endowed with eternal purpose).

We have a finite number of weeks to walk the earth and advance the oasis of Christ's joy into the desert, to invest rare love into hungry hearts, and to respond to temporal needs with creativity. We have a finite number of weeks to advance the cause of Christ to a world in such desperate need of His mercies.

In our modern world, being "short on time" seems to be an unquestioned constant. But we are not any shorter on time than in any other era of history. Instead, our life expectancy is better than it's been for millennia. Our homes and garages are stocked with machines that save so much time that it would absolutely boggle the minds of our ancestors. Speed of transportation is unprecedented, and speed of communication is immediate.

Our problem is not a shortness of time, but a confusion of our priorities. 

Evaluating Your Time Exercise & Worksheet

Take some time to journal through the following questions & complete this worksheet.

• How exactly are you investing our weeks?
• If we were to map out an average week, what areas of life get most of our attention?
• Is our schedule packed to the gills with extra drive time?
• Are we devoting the majority of our time dropping everything and responding to the boundary-less "emergencies" of others?
• Does mindless scrolling get the best hours of our week?
• Are our current priorities, events, projects, screentime activities and conversations worth the precious time out of our week that they're claiming?
• Are more important things consistently being de-prioritized in response to the tyranny of the urgent, digital distractions, or a reactive lifestyle that's been slapped together haphazardly?

It can be difficult to honestly evaluate how we have spent our time, but it can also be the exact catalyst needed to make us make the necessary changes. How you spend your moments is how you spend your life. Make sure you're truly making space to thrive.