Or, to put it another way, on the day when you die how many hours will you have enjoyed living. It’s not quite the same thing. Because each hour of your life is different. Some hours you live beautifully, happily, fully. Some hours……..you waste…… you simply throw them away. And it is a zero sum game. Because every hour that you throw away is subtracted from your lifetime. It turns out that how long you live is dependent on how well you live. In fact, after you subtract out the hours that you intentionally throw away, how well you live may very well be the greatest single determinant in how long you live.

Today, I want to explore the hours of our lives that we intentionally throw away. These are the hours, that on our death bed, have contributed nothing to our lives or the lives of those we love. These are the hours that could have been spent doing something that would have put a smile on our face……..as we are dying.

So what are these thrown away hours?

Any hour that you spend mad.

Many, if not most, of the hours that you spend staring at your cell phone (or other digital device).

A good test for any activity is this: ask yourself, “When I am dying, and my life passes before me, will this activity be on the video clip?”

Why do I say that these lost hours are subtracted from our lives? It hinges on purpose and on happiness. We were put here for 2 reasons: Love God. Love your fellow man. That is our purpose……..our only purpose. Any time that we are engaged in an activity that does not pursue those two goals, we are wasting time…….we are wasting life. Any time that we are engaged in an activity that does not pursue those two goals, we are not doing our only real job here. Any time that we are engaged in an activity that does not pursue those two goals, we are not happy……..because the only way to be truly happy……..is to do the thing that you were created for.

The corollary is this: You cannot be happy…… when you are mad. You cannot be happy with your face buried in your cell phone.

In a manner of speaking, when you are mad…….or glued to your “device du jour”……..you are not living…….because you are not doing what you were put here for.

So……..your life expectancy is about 78 years…..give or take. How many hours each day do you spend mad? It may hinge on how many hours you spend watching CNN or Fox……because keeping you mad is a multibillion dollar industry……2 hours a day?? How many hours a day do you spend doing something mindless on your cell phone?……4 hours a day?? Fill in your own numbers.

6 hours is about 1/3 of your waking day. That is about 26 years of your life expectancy. So…….if you are fairly typical……..your actual net life expectancy, after subtracting out the time that you intentionally throw away, is about 50 years.

Every now and then you will meet someone who is truly, deeply, foundationally happy. They are at peace. They are……..serene. What is the deal with these people? You are probably looking at someone who has drastically reduced the amount of their precious time that they are intentionally throwing away.

That is the person that I want to be…….. for the time that I have left.

I ain’t a-saying you treated me unkind
You could’ve done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

Bob Dylan

You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.

Deuteronomy 5:23, ESV

I am a woodworker. It began as a hobby and is now a small business. Mostly I make canes and “artsy” furniture. I’m old school and do things the old way. There is an old rule for making a horse out of wood: “Start with a tree……remove anything that doesn’t look like a horse.” And that is what I do.

This week I picked out a nice black walnut board and began making a cane. As I removed the “stuff that didn’t look like a cane”, I worked my way down to a defect. It was a split in the wood……and for a cane, it was a fatal flaw. I sawed it up, tossed it into the fireplace and started all over with a new board. I had about $10 in materials and $20 in labor invested in it; but, the cane wasn’t valuable enough to justify the $100 worth of effort it would take to salvage it. It was a good practical decision……and I am a good practical woodworker.

But, then it occurred to me……I am like that piece of walnut. So are you. We look good on the surface. But, when you start peeling away the layers, you begin to encounter flaws, some of them merely cosmetic…… some of them potentially fatal.

We are the raw materials that go into our society, our culture. And God is working with those materials. He is constructing a kingdom here on earth. He has an vision that he is working toward. And that vision is summed up in the two primary rules of the Bible:

Love God……love man.

So, he works away at his workbench……..removing anything that doesn’t look like “Love God……love man”.

And he works his way down to a flaw in the material……my flaw…….or yours. And that is where things change…….where God is different from me.

Instead of tossing me into the fireplace, he uses me……just as I am. He invests the effort and resources necessary to draw something beautiful out of something flawed.

I’m sure that this process will work better if I am fully engaged…….and I try. But, God will use you and me……and all of our flaws……to build something beautiful……..even if we don’t cooperate…….even if we reject him outright.

Why would God continue to invest his effort in working with flawed materials? Why doesn’t he just toss us into the fireplace and start all over?

Because he loves us.

That’s just the way he operates.

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

Jeremiah 18:1-6, ESV

Cindy and I spend a lot of time in Arizona. There is an operation out there called Biosphere. It is a sealed environment. It began as a serious scientific investigation into what it takes to create a sustainable ecosystem. At one point there were even people living in it. Ultimately, however, it seems to have devolved into a tourist attraction.

Why?

Biosphere failed because its ecosystem was not sustainable and could not be made to become sustainable. We hear a lot about sustainability these days. We worry about climate change because an ecosystem that is heating up, as ours clearly is, is not sustainable. That is to say, our ecosystem, earth, cannot go on like this indefinitely. Good intentioned people are working hard to change things in order to acheive sustainability……..in order to achieve survivability.

They tell us that climate change is an “existential crisis”.
And they are right.

They propose solutions:
Electric cars
Wind and solar power.
Mass transit

They hope for a tech breakthrough:
Fusion energy

But, the cold hard truth is that world population has tripled in my lifetime and will double again in a few decades. In spite of our best efforts, our global “carbon footprint is getting worse, not better. At some point in the future “planetary warming” might slow down…….but, if so, that slowing hasn’t begun yet. The cold hard truth is that there is no viable plan to stop the warming much less reverse it.

What this means is that sustainability on this planet…….is a mirage.

What this means is that life, as we know it, on this beautiful planet simply cannot go on indefinitely. The best we can hope for is to delay our inevitable doom. The science is crystal clear and we are ignoring it.

And that…….is the bad news.

But, there is some good news. It turns out that science is telling us……if we will only listen….. what the Bible has been telling us for centuries. This planet is not immortal. It was never intended to be immortal. Sustainability is a human idea, not God’s idea. God planned for a beginning. God planned for an end……and it is going to be ugly.

Secular humanists cling to sustainability because they have no “plan-B”. For the same reason, they ignore the long term projections of science.

Christianity, however, describes an end to this physical world that aligns with the long term projections of science at least in broad strokes. In addition, Christianity offers the hope of a world after this world.

Christianity agrees with science that the planetary ecosystem that we call earth is doomed.

But

Christianity offers sustainability…..for your spirit.

And that is the good news.

in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

2 Timothy 3:1-5,ESV

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

Revelation 21:1, ESV