From its inception eight years ago, we've tried to be long on practical help and short on issues. We have strong views on a variety of issues, but others address those things with more proficiency than we do.

Many of the issue-oriented pro-family advocates worry about the effect of changing moral standards on our families. We don't disagree with them, but we wonder if we may be ignoring the biggest culprit of all, the abuse of time. In this respect we're not in a position to say, "We've got it all figured out. Follow our example." In truth we are fellow strugglers. We don't fight the clock quite as much as we once did, but it's still there - appointments, schedules, demands, the need to respond to emergencies. We live in the same world you do and we're trying to make sense of it. In today's feature article we attempt to get the issue out in the open. If we can be more deliberate about our use of time, perhaps we can avoid some of the stress that takes such a negative toll on our digestion, nerves and relationships.

Norman and Ann

In 1975 Jim Croce penned these memorable lyrics:

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
'Til eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you.

Everybody struggles with the time crunch. Like Jim Croce we dream of capturing time in a bottle - can it, freezing it, rewinding it, preserving it-- anyway we can. "Time in a bottle" works well as a song lyric, but as a practicality, we all know it's impossible. A composer will never work it into a song lyric, but time is more like a Styrofoam soft drink cup with a hole in the bottom. It seeps away until it's all gone and there's no way to patch the hole.

When we first marry, we intend to make time together our priority. We visualize future shared experiences. We plan to build a house, take memorable vacations together, walk hand-in-hand down scenic trails and laugh. We'll ignore the clock as we spend endless hours talking about everything in general and nothing in particular. We're hoping to celebrate our golden wedding anniversary some day and there's even a day out there in the future when one of us will die, but we've got plenty of time for shared experiences between now and then.

Then the honeymoon ends before we really had a chance to get started on relationship building. Soon the children come along. Our dream focus changes slightly but it's still about family. There's plenty of time for that too. Eighteen or twenty years down the road, the first child will probably leave home, but for now, we're a big happy family. There's no need to get in a hurry about these things though, there's still plenty of time, or so we think.

Somehow it doesn't quite work out that way. We get caught in a time crunch. An incredibly large number of people compete for segments of your time - your employer, your child's teacher, your child's coach, your child's music teacher, your child's martial arts teacher, your doctor, your minister, your tax preparer and at least a dozen others all the way down to the vacuum cleaner salesman. You're tempted to ask them to pick a number and wait. Somehow that dream world of "saving every day 'til eternity passes away" just doesn't seem to fit our circumstances. Later on in Jim Croce's song, he wrote:

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do

We're putting more time in at work than we used to. Right? We're too busy to give proper attention to the things that matter most. Right? There's something going on every night and it's all necessary. Right? We don't have time to build relationships, right?

There are those who would shake their heads and disagree on all counts. A couple of Penn State Professors, John Robinson and Geoffery Godbey decided to find out. They asked ten thousand people to keep twenty-four hour diaries of the way they spent their time. Their findings challenge popular perceptions about time. Up front they asked the study participants, "How do you think you spend your time?" They added up the figures from the estimate and compared them to the diaries. The figures didn't agree. For example the men thought they spend an average of 46.2 hours at work every week, but their diaries revealed they only spent 40.2 hours. Compared to studies done in 1965, the research indicates we have actually gained leisure time.

You're probably asking the same thing we're asking. Where did they dig us these ten thousand study participants? They certainly didn't ask us. Whether you accept their findings our not, it's hard to disagree with their conclusions about free time. We squander most of it in front of the television set. Again you may protest, "Television? There's nothing on worth watching anymore. What makes you think I'm spending more time watching sitcoms and so-called reality shows? Actually it sneaks up on us. Very few of us watch television during all our discretionary time. We do it in tiny portions, a half an hour here and an hour there, but it all adds up.

An ancient insight from Scripture addresses our use of time. "Be careful, then, how you live - not as unwise, but as wise making the most of every opportunity because the days are evil." - Ephesians 5:15-16. When a married couple looks back over the chasm between their wedding and their golden anniversary, they will wonder how the time went so fast. When the nest empties, parents will shake their heads in disbelief. How could you go from "Rock a Bye Baby" to "Pomp and Circumstance" so quickly? Every moment is precious. But how do you "make the most of every opportunity?" Having made a lot of mistakes in the use of time, we'll share some of the ways we should have handled the time crunch.

We should have kept a diary of the way we actually spent our time over a two-week period. Recently a doctor asked us to keep a daily record of our medical progress over a couple of weeks. It was most helpful in developing a treatment program. Wouldn't it also be helpful in treating our time sickness? ? We would toss the "quality time" rationalization in the garbage can. Try to imagine a corporate executive named Jason. He asks his secretary to get his wife Janet on the phone. Jason's too important to make the call himself. Once she's on the phone, he said, "Janet, I've scheduled you for a 3:30 appointment, right after my appointment with our bank president and just before my tee time at the golf course." Then he adds, "Janet, I only managed thirty minutes for you but it will be quality time. You don't have much of me, so be sure to make the most of it." Do you really think Janet is going to be impressed? We would suspect that Janet would tell him to move his tee time up another thirty minutes and forget about her appointment. Relationship building does require quality time, but it also requires quantity time and it must be unhurried time. ? We would limit extracurricular activities. Several years ago we heard a friend offer this unsolicited advice to his new son-in-law. "If you've got a job, a house, a car and if you're active in the church, you've got about all you can handle." It sounded severe at the time, but he wasn't that far off the mark. We can't put time in a bottle but we can slow the seepage from the Styrofoam cup if we'll mark a big red X through some of our appointments. While we're on that subject, we'll express an unpopular opinion based on our own failure to limit extracurricular activities. If we ran the world, no child would be involved in more than one extracurricular activity either at school or after school. ? We should have spent some vacations without agenda. Norman has always been a vacation planner. Six months before we leave, he knows where we're going to spend the night and how many miles we are going to make in a day. Because of our efficient vacation planning we've never driven on the Natchez Trace or the Blue Ridge Parkway and we wish we had. Try taking a vacation without an agenda. It will frustrate the Normans of the world, but they'll get over it and they'll like it when they see relationships improving. Elliott, our oldest son, has a different philosophy about vacations. He simply says, "We get there when we get there."

F. L. Eiland, a nineteenth century hymn writer began his most famous song, "Hold to God's Unchanging Hand" with these lyrics. "Time if filled with swift transition." A generation later Tillit S. Teddlie expanded on the same theme. His song lyrics challenge us to rethink our attitudes toward time

Swiftly we're turning life's daily pages.
Swiftly the hours are turning to years.
How we are using God's previous moment,
Shall we reap laughter shall we reap tears?

At the end of our time on this earth, which one will it be? Will it be laughter or will it be tears?

"The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love." Psalm 103:8.

The other day a father said to me, "My son gets so down on himself when he does not play well in the baseball game." I said, "Do you encourage him and let him know you are proud of him anyway?" He replied, I probably do that to a fault." I asked, "Do you let him know that his disappointment is okay?" He responded, "Probably not."

I can see the picture of what is happening with this father and son. The father tries to encourage his son and let him know that he accepts him and he is just glad he is out there trying and none of us are always at our best. The child is still frustrated and unhappy with himself and this is where the parent takes a negative turn. The father becomes frustrated at this point. Probably several dynamics are at work. The father is feeling somewhat helpless because his encouragement is not working. At a deeper level the father may even feel threatened because he is not getting the desired outcome from his son. He has his own sense of failure.

I heard a wonderful phrase the other day, "Let your child borrow from your emotions." That is the other part of this scenario. The father is taking his cue for his emotions from his son instead of vice versa. If the father could have stopped the "normal" pattern and simply chose to have compassion and grace for his son, it would have meant growth for both.

The father needed to show acceptance of what his son was feeling. If this is what the child was feeling, then all feelings are okay. We must make good decisions with our feelings, but any feeling is acceptable. When a parent cannot accept where a child is with his feelings at the moment, then the child gets the message that he is not okay. His feelings are his deepest part of himself and he must be able to know that his very deepest part is acceptable. Please be aware. Acceptance of feelings does not mean acceptance of behavior. But feelings, yes.

There is a most valuable question to ask ourselves in any interaction with our children. That question is, "What do I want my child to learn from this situation?" "What do you think this child learned?" Not only does the child feel like a failure in baseball, but even his feelings are not okay and he has not had a whole lot of practice in managing his feelings at this stage of the game. And as this interaction progressed, he certainly did not get the message of compassion and love and acceptance from his father. He believes he is a failure in baseball and he is also a failure in pleasing his father. That is what he learned.

Look again at that phrase, "Let your child borrow from your emotions." Have you ever noticed that emotions can be contagious? When one enters a group who is angry, the anger can move through the whole group. When one enters a group who is happy and laughing, the good mood can move through the whole group. And if we have the compassion and grace of the Lord when we interact with our children, what would that do to their emotions.

Another problem exists in this story. The father was taking his cue for his emotions from the child, not the child from the father. This represents a reversal of hierarchy. The father needs to be maintaining his emotions and allowing his child to learn from that experience. If the father could have felt acceptance toward the child, the child could have taken that emotion from the father.

My dictionary gives this definition for compassion: "The deep feeling of sharing the suffering of another, together with the inclination to give aid or support or to show mercy." (The American Heritage Dictionary) Isn't that the picture of the heavenly father we see in Psalm 103? What total acceptance this child could have felt, if his father had managed a healthier response.

As I began this series I wanted to use the picture of the perfect father in Psalm 103 (And certainly none of us are perfect parents.) and illustrate how the traits of that father will help us give our children a saving faith. If our children have a saving faith they will be producing the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22,23. When we feel a total understanding and acceptance from God as described in Hebrews 4:15, we will produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When our children receive that kind of compassion and acceptance and grace from us, they also will learn to produce love and joy and peace. What more can we ask?

by Elmer F. Little, Jr,

(Note from Norman) For more than twenty years I enjoyed the friendship of Elmer Little. Two or three years ago I heard that Elmer was seriously ill. I probably sent an e-mail message to encourage him. I didn't call and I didn't make a trip to New Mexico to see him. One day I learned that Elmer had died. Ann and I attended the memorial service in Dallas. While we offered consolation to his family I regret that I didn't really touch base with him during his last days. As I was preparing the material on time, I ran across an article Elmer wrote on the subject back in 1982. If I had pulled it out of my files earlier, I might have been more attentive to Elmer. Let me encourage you to read what Elmer wrote