Principled business 2 - The value of time
- This page is part of an ERW course, Principles of economic restoration.
- By John Eagles, April 19, 2010
Imagine that you are hungry and someone gives you a bread. What are you supposed to do with that bread, when you are not the only one who is hungry but there are people around you who need food as well? You must cut the bread in pieces and share it with others. When you are an honest person you will try to divide it fairly. Also, you want to eat the bread before it gets bad.
Now imagine that time is like that piece of bread, given to us by God, and we are the hungry people. God made time for the purpose of creating living beings and things. All that is created is formed over a certain time period. Our own growth, physical and spiritual, takes place through regular stages that are connected to certain rather exact periods of time.
Numbers are always attached to meaningful time periods. For example, our growth to individual maturity takes place in roughly 21 years divided in three stages of growth of each seven years.
The day was created by God for the purpose of us accomplishing a full but not so big creation. The year was created for the fulfillment of a larger creation.
One of the results of the fall was that people became unaware of the meaning of time. They tend to misuse time for self-centered purposes. Some people know how to get the most out of time but they are very focused on reaching goals only for themselves. Many other people are kind of confused about time. Time runs through their fingers like sand does. They don't know how to appreciate time and it has little meaning to them.
In God's world, in God's Providence of Restoration, all creations, all feats of restoration are bound within time periods to which a number is attached. For example, for the completion of a separation from something evil, a period in the wilderness may be needed making conditions of prayer and fasting during 40 days.
When we do business, we can learn to restore time for our own lives. This will not happen if we fall for the idea that time = money. To think that time = money is a temptation to put the value of time down to that of money. Time was given to us for the sake of our creation and restoration. It is a most precious gift from God.
When we do business centered on a higher purpose, we need to accomplish things within certain time periods. Goals are set within limited time periods. If that goal extends over several months or years, we need to fulfill smaller goals within each day or even each hour. If the smaller goals are not fulfilled it will not be possible to accomplish the larger goals.
We can learn about the value of time by doing business, but we'll learn this in the right way only when we are open to receive our tasks and goals from God and when we offer the results of what we do to God.
Once we discover more about the value of time, it will help us to fulfill goals for our own restoration, which of course also are bound to certain time periods. We learn that if we didn't fulfill a goal within for example 40 days, we also won't be able to fulfill it easily in 60 or 70 days. It is like a chance that got lost, if we did not manage to fulfill within a period demanded by the principles of restoration. We are all part of a bigger universe and only when we find the way to fit into the larger whole, we can get the support that we need from that larger world.
It is like learning that in order for a house to be built, all those involved in the construction must work together. Time provides the framework that enables us to work together in matters of spirituality and growth and to receive help from God and good spirit world. Doing business in the right way makes us aware of the value of time.
