Redeeming the Time

Happy last day of 2024 and happy 2025, Everyone!

As always, I want to write a post on the last day of the year, reflecting on the year past and anticipating (even recording a prediction or two) for the upcoming year.

It's always fun to look back on last year's New Year's Eve post to see what I expected for the upcoming year. Seeing my main prediction is always the unpredictability of the new year, I've been spot-on in my predictions. In uncanny ways, sometimes. Last year's December 31st post mentioned some goals for 2024 (besides my usual prediction that the year would hold some surprises for us). Oddly, I aimed too low. The goals now look like a pretty low bar.

There were a lot of surprises. Surprisingly, the surprises were that all the plans we planned (or even hopes that we hoped...or even pipe dreams that we, er, piped (?) dreamed (?)) for the year came true. But in such unpredictable ways. I blogged about these occurrences as they occurred, so I won't repeat all the stories here. But Psalm 20:4-5 seem like the verses of the year: "May he grant you your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans! May we shout for joy over your salvation, and in the name of our God set up our banners! May the LORD fulfill all your petitions!" (ESV).

At the end of the year, I always like to take the year's kitchen calendar and go through it, transferring important dates to the new calendar but also trying to decipher the scrawls on the old calendar and reliving the happenings they represented. When I look back at 2024, the word "productivity" comes to mind. I still can't conceive how everything got packed into the year that got packed in! Two books published. Two books (mostly) written (not identical to the two books that got published). Two audio books recorded. Three blogs kept up on (better than in other years, at least). Two major road trips and family/friend visits accomplished. A house renovation nearly complete. A trailer purchase and renovation completely complete. A piece of property in Hometown, B.C. now in our names with house plans sitting in our drawer. A steady stream of out-of-town company and more dinner guests than I can now recall. And much more additional time spent with local friends and our church body.

And those were just the projects/events that I was involved in. Mark had an unending series of property-management tasks, handyman jobs, guide trips, church activities, book promotions, YouTube videos, chapters of a new book written. And yet, I look at the future with a sense of urgency. The older I get, the less time I want to waste. The more I want to pack in to the time allotted to me. There are still so many future plans hanging out in my brain.

As we head into 2025, I've been thinking about a repeated statement Paul makes in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 4: "...redeeming the time..."

It's a curious turn of phrase. To "redeem" is "to buy back." What does it mean to "buy back" time? In both passages where Paul uses the phrase, the context is living wisely. Plainly, whatever else Paul may have meant by "redeeming the time," he was thinking of using time wisely. In what sense is using time wisely "buying it back"?

When I discussed the verses with Mark, he offered the insight that time-wasting in the past can be "bought back." I thought of God's promise in Joel 2:25 that, through our repentance, He is able to restore the years "the locusts have eaten." What looks like a barren, devastated wasteland of past years doesn't have to be the story of our lives. The present and future lived wisely and intentionally can make up for the wasteland.

Because of the monetary or financial aspect of "redeeming," I was sent down the thought-trail of the expression as a value-statement. The opposite of "redeeming the time" would certainly be wasting it. Like wasting money, the opposite of "redeeming the time" would be spending valuable time on what is of no or little worth.

And in those terms, I could think of several time-wasters that I could cut out. I don't just mean leisure activities. If there's enjoyment value in an activity, even reading or watching a movie or listening to a podcast or connecting on social media, there is value to the activity. How much value may depend on how much enjoyment I derive from the activity, but I'm not sold on cutting out all leisure and all enjoyment. What I'm sold on cutting out this year in an attempt to better "redeem my time" are the mindless time-wasters. The time-sucks I don't even enjoy. Now, again, don't misunderstand me. I don't mean activities that have little enjoyment but are useful activities. I don't plan to clean my house even less than I do at present or cut out grocery shopping. I mean activities that are neither enjoyable nor useful. When I really started thinking about it, I could identify at least three (which I won't bother to detail here----we can all probably find our own individual instances of time-squanderers that are mindless, pointless habits).

"Hmmm, if 2024 was a productive year, how much more productive could 2025 be, just by living more intentionally, just by being more mindful about avoiding those three, silly, little, mindless habits?" I asked myself. I don't make new year's resolutions, but sometimes I will have goals or intentions or, at least, hopes for the new year. Although Mark and I do have some specific hopes that we'd like to see happen in 2025, for me, personally, I think a great step toward seeing them happen in 2025 is a mindset of "redeeming the time." So, I suppose, that will be my personal goal or hope for 2025. I don't know that it's a prediction. But, if I have to make one, I guess I'll predict that I will have more of a "redeeming the time" mindset in 2025 than I've had in previous years. The less time I have to redeem, the more carefully I want to steward it.

Today (as we did one year ago on New Year's Eve Day), Mark and I climbed the hill where we got together originally and where we got together officially and signed the papers that wed us legally. It's called the "Dillon Overlook," and you can see the little town of Dillon in our selfie. I had it in my head that I wanted to make a little tradition out of climbing that hill on New Year's Eve Day as long as we're in Dillon on that day for us to start the new year off by dedicating it to God and praying over Dillon while overlooking it from the Overlook. We're planning our move from Dillon probably around the beginning of August 2025, so this will likely be our last year to pray over Dillon on New Year's Eve.

I've been reading through the book for Revelation for a month or so, and while praying over Dillon from the Overlook (with my mind still on the subject of "redeeming the time"), I also started thinking about my Revelation 21-22 reading from this morning. I think it was leaving behind our Dillon friends and how great it will be when we never have to say "good-bye" ever again that brought the passage about the "New Jerusalem," our forever home, from Revelation 21-22 to mind. I was struck by the repeated statements that "these words are faithful and true" and that Jesus says He's coming quickly. (If you live in eternity, what's a couple of millennia, I guess.)

The older I get, the more grateful I am that the words of Revelation 21-22 are true and faithful. And the more aware I am that time goes fast. I want to "redeem the time" that's left in Dillon and make the most of the time I have left before leaving the church family and friends we have here. And when we leave, I'll want to "redeem the time" with all the others God brings into our lives and whose lives God brings us into.

But I am also so, so grateful that there's an eternity waiting. I guess by "redeeming the time" I mostly mean, living with that eternity in mind.