Of time and money
It may not seem like there is any connection between time and money. We know however that if you spend time working you usually get rewarded with money. This is not the only connection.
We have here in this life only a limited amount of time available to us.
We also have only a limited amount of money.
But you may say that some people have a lot more money than most. This is true, but some people have more time than most.
When it comes to the point of the discussion, what we do with these resources of time and money make the difference in our lives and to some extent the lives of others as well.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." My parents would often quote this to my brothers and me.
Christ said in a parable about a man who had money and goods and said that he would tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store his goods in. The upshot of the story was that the man died that very night. What good did his money do? He ran out of time, and then the riches were of no use to him.
I might tell you a story of my good friend from high school, Donald Doughty, to further illustrate the point. Don and I both played the clarinet. We occasionally did things together. One summer we went to Laramie to a summer band camp at the University of Wyoming. We competed for first chair first clarinet the following school year. My senior year Don went to the university and I became the first chair.
Don started smoking in high school. He went on to become a computer whiz kid. He sold his disk operating system and became a very wealthy man.
One day he came back to Lander to visit. He had emphysema and trouble breathing. He said that if he lifted the skin on his nose a certain way that he could breath easier. I did a little plastic surgery on his nose and he was appreciative of the result.
Because of his wealth and other circumstances his wife divorced him and made off with half of his fortune.
He found out that your grandmother worked for the travel agency, so she booked travel for him. She got a call from him one day from South America. He had been to Manchu Pichu and had gotten altitude sickness and ended up in the hospital where the doctor stole his cash. He was able to fly home where he wanted to get a heart lung transplant. Unfortunately he died before he could receive treatment for his chronic lung disease.
So he wasted his time here on this earth and his money.
If you think that this in some way doesn't happen to many people, you are naive.
Time and money are to be used to improve ourselves and bless our fellow men. Any time we use time and money inappropriately we do not take advantage of the reason we were placed here on the earth. Christ made that perfectly clear when he taught here on the earth.
What are we to do with our time and money here on this earth? We are to do many things, but two things stand out to me. We are to do good and improve ourselves and others.
We have a lot to learn about everything. We should be constantly learning and improving ourselves. This is no time to spend our hours sitting on the couch watching TV and eating chocolates.
As the song goes; we have work enough to do e'r the sun goes down. We spend a lot of our time and money on things that have no eternal worth. Even our thoughts are subject to eternal scrutiny.
This does not mean that we must be at it 24/7, but it does mean we should be prudent with our time and money. We need to know that there will be an accounting that we will have to give to The Lord.
I must now at this point address a prevalent illness in our society. Because electronic devices are so ubiquitous, there are countless hours spent playing mindless video games. Most all of the games that I have seen have no socially redeeming value. Rarely does one learn anything useful or educational except how to maneuver a joystick. If those who indulge in playing for hours on end would use the time spent on the device to learn a new language, read some of the classics such as Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott or James Fennimore Cooper, or watch Pavarotti on You Tube, they would at least have something at the end to show for it.
There are so many good and uplifting things to spend your time doing, rather than squandering time at something that will not improve you and make you a better person.
You only have one life to live. Live it to make you a better individual and by so doing enrich the lives of those around you.
Love,
Grandpa
It may not seem like there is any connection between time and money. We know however that if you spend time working you usually get rewarded with money. This is not the only connection.
We have here in this life only a limited amount of time available to us.
We also have only a limited amount of money.
But you may say that some people have a lot more money than most. This is true, but some people have more time than most.
When it comes to the point of the discussion, what we do with these resources of time and money make the difference in our lives and to some extent the lives of others as well.
I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said, "Do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." My parents would often quote this to my brothers and me.
Christ said in a parable about a man who had money and goods and said that he would tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store his goods in. The upshot of the story was that the man died that very night. What good did his money do? He ran out of time, and then the riches were of no use to him.
I might tell you a story of my good friend from high school, Donald Doughty, to further illustrate the point. Don and I both played the clarinet. We occasionally did things together. One summer we went to Laramie to a summer band camp at the University of Wyoming. We competed for first chair first clarinet the following school year. My senior year Don went to the university and I became the first chair.
Don started smoking in high school. He went on to become a computer whiz kid. He sold his disk operating system and became a very wealthy man.
One day he came back to Lander to visit. He had emphysema and trouble breathing. He said that if he lifted the skin on his nose a certain way that he could breath easier. I did a little plastic surgery on his nose and he was appreciative of the result.
Because of his wealth and other circumstances his wife divorced him and made off with half of his fortune.
He found out that your grandmother worked for the travel agency, so she booked travel for him. She got a call from him one day from South America. He had been to Manchu Pichu and had gotten altitude sickness and ended up in the hospital where the doctor stole his cash. He was able to fly home where he wanted to get a heart lung transplant. Unfortunately he died before he could receive treatment for his chronic lung disease.
So he wasted his time here on this earth and his money.
If you think that this in some way doesn't happen to many people, you are naive.
Time and money are to be used to improve ourselves and bless our fellow men. Any time we use time and money inappropriately we do not take advantage of the reason we were placed here on the earth. Christ made that perfectly clear when he taught here on the earth.
What are we to do with our time and money here on this earth? We are to do many things, but two things stand out to me. We are to do good and improve ourselves and others.
We have a lot to learn about everything. We should be constantly learning and improving ourselves. This is no time to spend our hours sitting on the couch watching TV and eating chocolates.
As the song goes; we have work enough to do e'r the sun goes down. We spend a lot of our time and money on things that have no eternal worth. Even our thoughts are subject to eternal scrutiny.
This does not mean that we must be at it 24/7, but it does mean we should be prudent with our time and money. We need to know that there will be an accounting that we will have to give to The Lord.
I must now at this point address a prevalent illness in our society. Because electronic devices are so ubiquitous, there are countless hours spent playing mindless video games. Most all of the games that I have seen have no socially redeeming value. Rarely does one learn anything useful or educational except how to maneuver a joystick. If those who indulge in playing for hours on end would use the time spent on the device to learn a new language, read some of the classics such as Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott or James Fennimore Cooper, or watch Pavarotti on You Tube, they would at least have something at the end to show for it.
There are so many good and uplifting things to spend your time doing, rather than squandering time at something that will not improve you and make you a better person.
You only have one life to live. Live it to make you a better individual and by so doing enrich the lives of those around you.
Love,
Grandpa
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