All I Have That He Does Not Is Time

You did the arithmetic honestly and it came out embarrassing.

You sat down and went through everything you have that he does not, and the list had one item on it.

Time. Not a great deal of it. But unhurried time, the kind with no meeting on the other side of it, and you have some and he genuinely has none.

And your immediate reaction to that was to reject it, because offering a man an afternoon feels like arriving at a house with nothing and calling it a gift.

It feels like the sort of thing a person says when there is nothing else left to offer. It has a whiff of consolation about it, and you would rather turn up empty than turn up with something that sounds like an excuse.

There is a phrase in Ephesians about time that treats it as something worth paying for, and it is worth taking seriously.

Redeeming the time

Here it is.

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:16, King James Version)

Redeeming is a market word. It means buying something back, paying to recover a thing that has gone out of your possession.

Which tells you immediately what kind of thing Paul thought time was. Not a background condition. Not the neutral medium everything happens in. A commodity, valuable enough that a man would spend to get it back.

You have been discounting the only thing the passage treats as worth purchasing, and Ephesians 5:16 calls time something to be redeemed rather than something that merely passes. The Holy Spirit is the one who put a market word in that sentence, and the word is the whole valuation.

Now the reason given, because it is the part that makes it urgent.

Because the days are evil. That is not a comment on the culture. It is an observation about how days behave. Days take. They consume themselves and everything in them, and left alone they will spend a person's whole life on things nobody chose.

You are being told that time gets taken rather than spent, and it is written that the days are evil rather than that they are neutral. The Spirit of God is the one who described days that way, and He described them accurately.

And now put your friend against that.

That man's days have been taking from him for twenty years, at a rate you cannot imagine, and he has never once been in a position to buy any of it back. Everything he owns arrived by spending the one thing the passage says is worth redeeming.

You are holding what he has been paying out for two decades, and the written word puts the value in the time rather than in what the time produced. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that arithmetic visible, and it comes out entirely the other way from how it looks in a hallway.

Why it does not feel like a gift

Now let me deal with the feeling, because the feeling is what has been stopping this and it is not going to argue itself away.

An afternoon does not feel like a gift because it does not cost you anything you can point to.

Everything a man has learned about giving says that the value is in the outlay. Something was obtained, at a cost, and handed over. An afternoon was not obtained. It was already there.

You have been measuring by outlay when the passage measures by scarcity, and it is written that the time is to be redeemed because the days are evil. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a man off the wrong measure, and the wrong measure is the only reason this looks thin.

And there is a second thing under it, and it is the one that actually stings.

Offering time means offering yourself. If an object lands badly, the object failed. If an afternoon lands badly, you did.

That is why a man reaches for a thing instead. A thing stands between two people and takes the weight.

You have been putting something between the two of you, and His word names the time itself as the thing worth recovering rather than anything that could stand in for it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an object out from between two men, and taking it out is the whole risk and the whole point.

And here is the plain thing about what he would actually say.

Ask any man in that position what he is short of and none of them say a thing. Every one of them says hours. He would tell you himself, in about four seconds, if anybody ever asked him.

You are holding exactly what he would name, and it is written that the days are evil and the time must be bought back rather than assumed. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what a full life is empty of, and it is almost never a possession.

Give an afternoon with nothing in it

So here is what to do, and the details matter more than usual.

Offer him a specific afternoon. Not sometime. Not we should get together. A day and a time, named, so that it is an actual thing rather than a sentiment.

And put nothing at the end of it. Nothing arranged afterward, nothing you have to leave for, no soft deadline anywhere in the shape of it.

You are able to hand over something with no edge on the far side, and Ephesians 5:16 treats time as a thing to be recovered rather than fitted in. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an open ended afternoon feel like wealth to a man who has not had one in years.

And do not fill it.

No plan, no activity, no purpose to justify it. Two chairs on grass, or a drive, or sitting on a porch. The emptiness is the gift and putting something in it would spend the very thing being given.

You are giving him the empty part, and it is written that the days are evil and take what is in them rather than that they need filling. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an unfilled hour do what a filled one cannot, and most men have not had an unfilled one this year.

And expect it to be awkward for the first twenty minutes.

Two men with nothing arranged usually take a while to settle, and a man used to purposeful hours will look for the purpose and not find it and be slightly unmoored. Let that pass. It always passes at around the twenty minute mark and then something else starts.

You have twenty minutes to get through and nothing beyond them, and Scripture puts the redeeming of time above whatever the time is used for. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in the awkward twenty minutes as much as in the rest, and He is not in a hurry about any of it.