Ever feel like you are losing time? Wonder where that last week went? I mean, it is now late April and wasn’t it just Valentine’s day yesterday? I thought it was also. 😎 But no, the clock keeps on spinning and whether or not someone has actually sped up time or its just that I am older and have a different perspective, it feels like I keep losing days.
But am I really? I mean, does anyone really have any hold on time? Well, C.S. Lewis had an excellent point on this from his masterful The Screwtape Letters. 
Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a chat with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own”. Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.
You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chattels.
There it is. Do you see it? We have no claim on our time….EVER. It was never your time to begin with. For the Chrsitian, it is even more this way, and Lewis makes this point as well. He adds “He is also, in theory, committed a total service of the Enemy [God]; and if the Enemy appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total service for even one day, he would not refuse. He would be greatly relieved if that one day involved nothing harder than listening to the conversation of a foolish woman; and he would be relieved almost to the pitch of disappointment if for one half-hour in that day the Enemy said “Now you may go and amuse yourself”. Now if he thinks about his assumption for a moment, even he is bound to realise that he is actually in this situation every day.”
Does that make sense? For the Christian, you not only have no time of your own making, the gift of time that you have been given is in total service of the Lord. Every day should then be spent in constant questioning of God “what would you have me do next?” Of course, most of the time, God wants you to just do your job well (“as unto the Lord”) and be a blessing to others and work for justice in your little world. However, He may want you to go talk to the unhappy co-worker or stop your journey on your day and buy that person a cup of coffee or maybe help someone in a task.
Now, what does that mean about how to Live Well? Or, what if you tell me “well I am not a Christian.” At the very least, it means this. Stop acting as if you have all the time in the world. No….you don’t. You only have this moment, this one right here. That doesn’t have to be a call to some deep meditative state….no, it really just means if you have a task, do it now. Don’t think you will be in some position later to magically create extra time.
It also means to not let opportunities pass you by. If a deadline looms to get your resume in order or the chance comes to take a walk with the boss or maybe you have a moment where you could decide to ask her out…..do it now! You don’t have any time of your own. As the demon Screwtape said, “man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift.”
Oh, last thing….back to Screwtape….when you find your day interrupted, maybe by someone who just needs to chat or perhaps is only asking for some quick help….rather than think somehow this person is stealing your time (remember, you NEVER have “my” time), stop to consider what else may be happening here. Perhaps, this will become your great chance to change a life for the better. And who knows, maybe that changed life will be yours.