"What time is it?"

"My, how time flies!"

"Hurry, or you'll be late!"

We are time-obsessed people. Most of us wear a wristwatch or keep our cell phones close by so we can keep an eye on the clock. It's perfectly natural to pay attention to time, and it's often courteous as well---we want to value other people's time, and we want ours to be valued too. But our obsession with time can be problematic.

Like everything else in our lives, time is a gift. It is given to us by the Creator, who allots each person just so much time on the earth, making time a precious commodity. As much as we like to think we control our time, it does not belong to us. It belongs to God. He lends us the minutes, hours, days, and years of our lives, and asks us to steward them for his glory and spend them for his kingdom.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about time in the context of worry and anxiety. "Do not worry about your life...." Don't be obsessed with all the things you need and want, food and clothes and all the other things you are concerned about, he says. "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" (Matt. 6:25ff).

Worry, anxiety, and hurrying don't accomplish what we think they do. They don't make our lives any better; they make them worse. They don't make us happier or more productive, but often they have the opposite effect. Jesus' approach is amazingly laissez-faire. Look at the birds and the flowers, he says. They don't worry or fret. They are simply who God created them to be, and in their own way, they simply depend on their creator. Jesus tells us here that we too should be like that.

But what does that mean? Jesus gives us the secret in verses 33-34: "Seek first [God's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself." In other words, rather than live life in anxiety, be like the birds and simply do what God has created you to do. He has created you to live within the circle of his loving will. That is all you need to be concerned about because when you are focused on God's kingdom, he will take care of everything else.

Since God gives us the time that we have on this earth, we should not waste it with worry, or spend it seeking selfish goals, or fill it with mind-numbing, soul-starving frivolities. There is nothing more satisfying and more gratifying in the world than living with purpose---that is, living according to the purpose God has given us.