Time is money.

 "Remember that time is money" is a well known phrase made popular historically by Benjamin Franklin in his 1748 essay "Advice to a Young Tradesman", although the phrase was already in print in a British newspaper called "The Free-Thinker" in 1719.

So what!

Why am I writing about this in a blog about spending time with God you may ask?

Well here are some thoughts....

"Time is money" is ingrained in many of us even subconsciously. The world has sold us a big fat lie that money can buy happiness or anything else you might desire.

We are often driven by the need to gain or keep financial security for ourselves or our loved ones. Someone wise told me that money never represents just money, it always represents something else.

Money can represent long hours of hard work over many years. It can represent our very real human desire to feel secure. It can represent our worth reflected out to others, the "big house, big car" goal.

 It can represent the chance to change our life circumstances to something better than our former generations experienced. It can represent important provisions for our older age when we are no longer able to work. It can represent many different things to many people.

Then you add the two ideas together that "time is money", and both 'money' and 'time' become precious to our human nature. We then see being still and quiet as something not quite right unless we are asleep.

Being brought up in a strong work ethic family personally, meant my world view was being busy and productive (even if I wasn't earning money) was good, and being still and resting was somehow not so good unless you were completely exhausted.

 It is hard to change our childhood worldview as adults, and it is something I am still on a journey with, although nine months of 'burn out' some years ago, and more recently heart and blood pressure issues, have clarified my focus about the importance of rest and being still on a regular basis.

If time is money, and time is a precious personal resource, what is my view then of spending five minutes of being "still" listening to God?

 Would part of our thoughts, even if we would never dare voice them, say we could be doing something else more 'productive' with those five minutes, either with work or with something very necessary in our lives?

What could be more important or more necessary than listening to the One who created us and would love to communicate with us?

We don't fully understand the extent of God's great love and heart towards us. If we did, we would live so differently.

I'm not promoting laziness, or no money, or a no work ethic. I'm promoting five minutes spent listening to the One who loves us more than we could possibly imagine right now.

Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus his prayer for them, as recorded in Ephesians 1:17-19

"that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power"

I think five minutes listening to God each day is a supremely beneficial use of our time in every way.

How can it be anything else?