For more than 20 years, I have lived on an island without a bridge, and I would not change that for the world. No one made us move here, and no one is forcing us to stay. Frankly, we just consider ourselves to be blessed to be here. Nearly everything about this community fits us, and it is hard to imagine replicating this experience or quality of life anywhere else. Yet there’s a reason why this island isn’t for everyone, and that reason is the boat ride.
Whether you love the boat ride or you aren’t excited about it, the bottom line is that the mainland and all that it has to offer is at the other end of the ride. Since most of us live here on the island because we don’t want to be on the mainland, we try to minimize how often we take a trip “overseas”. Yet there are some trips that are hard to avoid, like various medical visits or grocery shopping. And in any potential case, the primary consideration is whether or not the purpose of the trip warrants the commitment of time required to get to the boat, ride across the sound, get to your car, and then reach your destination.
We don’t tend to do casual lunches with friends on the mainland, and the idea of meeting up for coffee seems ridiculous – that is, unless you can fit it around a trip to the store. Otherwise, you might be looking at allocating five hours to something that would only require one hour if you didn’t have to think about a boat ride. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t make those trips. What it means is that we have counted the cost, including the commitment of time, and determined that it is worth it.
Time is the most precious commodity, and most of us have not yet fully appreciated that – particularly since none of us knows how much time we have left. New Testament author James points that out when he writes that you don’t know what tomorrow brings. Most of us still have plenty of things that we have to allocate time towards, which should simply place an even greater value on our free time. The bottom line is that we likely have far less time than we want, so we should value it accordingly. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t spend it or invest it.
The next 24 hours will pass no matter how you fill them, but there are some things that are simply too important to not give your time to. I don’t know what those things are in your life, but if you don’t know what they are either, then I suggest that you spend some of the time that you have now figuring it out. There may well be things worth doing that will take a chunk of your time, and the later you figure that out, the harder it will be to find that block of time. The time will pass whether you are doing something that is important to you or not, so you might as well set your schedule to fit the things that really matter – even if it means taking five hours to have a one-hour lunch. Because some things are just worth it.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron