Be very 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)
Are you ready to "make the most of every opportunity"? Is your life being lived on the cutting-edge of evangelistic enterprise? Because this verse seems to suggest that it ought to be. Every day there are opportunities galore, if only you have eyes to see them, and your duty is to grasp them with both hands. Or at least it appears to say that if you ignore the context. Which is never the wise choice.
So maybe it's more about how the older translation puts it: "redeeming the time". Nailing down every last second of the day, making sure you can offer it to Jesus in full efficiency and complete effectiveness. No ragged edges or fluffed lines, because he's not interested in anything defective. As Depeche Mode sang, "Everything counts, in large amounts".
If that is the way to understand the text you can't ever afford to get it wrong, to freewheel during a single day or take your foot even an inch off the pedal. Not once. Because you've got to redeem the time - rescue it from the waste bin and recycle it into an always-on mode of discipleship. Anything less is failing to honour your Lord.
The good news is that neither of those explanations are correct. It's not about evangelism and it isn't about productivity. Those are not authentic readings of this text. Both are important in their respective contexts (one more so than the other, perhaps), but this verse is from somewhere else.
This is set within the daily grind of living as a Christian, in the in-between time of the here-and-now before the hereafter. The days when we get up reluctantly and go to bed wearily. When we see and hear sights and sounds that grieve us deeply, even as they pressure us towards acceptance and compromise. Days when we are tempted to fall in with the fruitless deeds of darkness rather than expose them. When the easy choice is moral slumber.
Faced with the starkness of those choices - between light and darkness, between wisdom and folly - Paul is urging us to redeem the time/make the most of every opportunity of living in the light. To approach our days in light of God's character and to act from his work within us. To serve his commission to be salt and light in a crooked and perverse generation. To find out what pleases him and to rejoice in making that our aim.
Such lives will, of course, invite questions about the Lord and requests for the reasons for the hope we have. They will be lives that sanctify each day, not through productivity hacks but in holiness and love, in Spirit-given worship, with heartfelt thankfulness "to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The days we're living through desperately need us to act as though our words and deeds matter. An open display that the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth will be the most clarifying and compelling reality for a world whose days are framed in folly and shrouded in shame.
We are now, by his grace, "light in the Lord". Translated and transformed. Our high calling and our dearest privilege is to serve our Saviour in the freedom he has so freely given. Choosing to walk in love, owning that all our days are his, that we and they have been redeemed, liberated from the dominion of sin and grafted into the grace of life.
So maybe it's more about how the older translation puts it: "redeeming the time". Nailing down every last second of the day, making sure you can offer it to Jesus in full efficiency and complete effectiveness. No ragged edges or fluffed lines, because he's not interested in anything defective. As Depeche Mode sang, "Everything counts, in large amounts".
If that is the way to understand the text you can't ever afford to get it wrong, to freewheel during a single day or take your foot even an inch off the pedal. Not once. Because you've got to redeem the time - rescue it from the waste bin and recycle it into an always-on mode of discipleship. Anything less is failing to honour your Lord.
The good news is that neither of those explanations are correct. It's not about evangelism and it isn't about productivity. Those are not authentic readings of this text. Both are important in their respective contexts (one more so than the other, perhaps), but this verse is from somewhere else.
This is set within the daily grind of living as a Christian, in the in-between time of the here-and-now before the hereafter. The days when we get up reluctantly and go to bed wearily. When we see and hear sights and sounds that grieve us deeply, even as they pressure us towards acceptance and compromise. Days when we are tempted to fall in with the fruitless deeds of darkness rather than expose them. When the easy choice is moral slumber.
Faced with the starkness of those choices - between light and darkness, between wisdom and folly - Paul is urging us to redeem the time/make the most of every opportunity of living in the light. To approach our days in light of God's character and to act from his work within us. To serve his commission to be salt and light in a crooked and perverse generation. To find out what pleases him and to rejoice in making that our aim.
Such lives will, of course, invite questions about the Lord and requests for the reasons for the hope we have. They will be lives that sanctify each day, not through productivity hacks but in holiness and love, in Spirit-given worship, with heartfelt thankfulness "to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The days we're living through desperately need us to act as though our words and deeds matter. An open display that the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth will be the most clarifying and compelling reality for a world whose days are framed in folly and shrouded in shame.
We are now, by his grace, "light in the Lord". Translated and transformed. Our high calling and our dearest privilege is to serve our Saviour in the freedom he has so freely given. Choosing to walk in love, owning that all our days are his, that we and they have been redeemed, liberated from the dominion of sin and grafted into the grace of life.
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Finding (Time) - by James K.A. Smith is a worthwhile read to go with this morning's reflection.
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My times are in Thy hand:
My God, I wish them there;
My life, my friends, my soul I leave
Entirely to Thy care.
My times are in Thy hand,
Whatever they may be,
Pleasing or painful, dark or bright,
As best may seem to Thee.
My times are in Thy hand:
Why should I doubt or fear?
A Father's hand will never cause
His child a needless tear.
My times are in Thy hand,
Jesus, the crucified;
Those hands my cruel sins had pierced
Are now my guard and guide.
My times are in Thy hand:
I'll always trust in Thee;
And, after death, at Thy right hand
I shall for ever be.
(William Freeman Lloyd, 1791-1853)
