How do you spend your time in an average week? There are 168 hours in a week. Let’s tally up how we use those hours. I’m going to list averages, so you can adjust the numbers a bit to align with your life, as we humans have a lot of variety in our use of time. First of all, sleep. We sleep on average 7 hours per night. Add in naps, and that works out to about 50 hours per week. Second, eating. This one is probably all over the place. 21 meals, plus snacks…let’s go with 10 hours per week. Third, personal hygiene. Think bathroom tasks. Probably another 10 hours per week. Fourth, cleaning and chores, another 10. Fifth, school or work. We work about 8 hours per day, five days per week. Or if you are a student, you are in school about that much. That’s another 40 hours. Where’s our total so far? 120 hours. That leaves 48 hours for commuting, volunteering, church, family time and personal time that could include hobbies, exercise, media, etc. How do you spend that remaining 48 hours?
My point in asking us to examine how we use our time each week is that we rarely do this kind of self-evaluation. In other words, are you using your 168 hours the way you want to?
More than likely, you are in a routine, and we allow that routine to guide us week after week, month after month, year after year. When is the last time your evaluated your routines? While there may be needed course corrections in how we spend our time, my guess is that most of us have established routines because those routines are useful to us. Routines are not bad. In fact, we can rely on a routine for decades, and it may serve us quite well. Handled rightly, routine can actually be a very good thing. What we heard last week in our study through Colossians is this, “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col. 3:17)
Are your routines in line with “do all in the name of Jesus”? Looking at your 168 hours per week, are you using them in line with “do all in the name of Jesus”?
As we continue our study in Colossians, the writer, Paul explains in more detail just how it is that we do all in the name of Jesus, especially looking at those places where we spend most of our time. At home and at work. Or for students, at school. And for retirees, where you volunteer.
We’re going to look at family this coming week, and then work (or school or volunteering) the next week. Check out Colossians 3:18-21 ahead of time, then I look forward to discussing this further with you on the blog.
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