Time Well Spent

"A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."

- John 13:34 (KJV)

That probably looks pretty familiar to a number of you out there, and I suppose the question is where am I going with this whole thing?  Which is a legitimate question.  For those of you that are familiar with it, I'm sure you have heard a number of lessons and sermons on how we ought to love one another, how we are to love as Christ loved us, how Christ has loved us, etc...  So I don't know that I'm going to say anything mind-shatteringly new.  I'm probably not actually.  But it doesn't have to be something new to be something important.  I suppose in some sense what I am discussing is "how" one loves another, but I don't want to approach it in the sense of something like The Five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman.  I kind of just grant that everyone needs/desires to be loved differently, which naturally leads us to the conclusion that we are to love each person differently.  I suppose this gets kind of confusing at times because we so often attempt to quantify love, but just because the treatment is different is not indicative of a different "amount" of love.  That's not really what I want to talk about either though.  I suppose at this point I'm just kind of rambling.  The aspect of love that I wish to discuss here, is the aspect of time.

Why time?  Well for one thing, I feel that time is something that we all have the same amount of (in a broad sense of the term).  We each of 24 hours in each day, and while some may argue that some have more days than others (in the grand scheme of things), for purposes of this discussion, I find that point rather irrelevant.  I suppose the crux of where I'm going with this is that it takes time to love somebody, and you can't love somebody if you don't spend time doing so.  It's along the premise that you can't really love someone you don't know.  Now where time comes in is this.  We are always investing our time in something.  I would posit that you could boil it down to two things: ourselves and not ourselves.  Like how we spend our money is indicative of our priorities, even more so is how we spend our time. To love more I must know more.  The better I know someone, the better I can love that person.

If we really stop to think and ask ourselves, how much time do I really spend on myself? I believe that the answer will not be one that is entirely pleasant to us.  Not to say that we ought not do anything for ourselves, certainly there are necessities that must be met.  We need to have income that we may support ourselves (and perhaps a family) and pay rent, buy food, etc...  We certainly need to sleep.  After that though, where does our time go?  I for one enjoy playing volleyball, and at times have obligated myself to a team to play in a league.  While I may be playing with other people, I've primarily invested that time into satiating my personal enjoyment of volleyball.  Likewise with music or any other enjoyment I have.  Does that mean I cannot love the people I do these things with?  Certainly not, but we must certainly consider the context (there's that word again) behind why we're there in the first place.  Am I there for the people or the activity?  I believe that the former is the clearest demonstration of love, because it tells the other person, "You are important to me and I will give up other things to be with you."

Thus the question to myself is whether or not I am making that conscious effort to spend that time with others?  I know that time is precious, we all don't have a whole lot of it.  I'm sure that we all believe that other people are important to us, I don't think I need to tell you that other people are important, if I do, there's a bigger problem here.  I'm sure there's at least one person in your life that is important to you, let that person know, give him/her your time.