The Gift of Time
Every man is handed the same amount at midnight, and the ones who say they have none of it have never counted.
Sunday afternoon. The pastor caught him in the lot after the service and asked whether he could take the Thursday reading hour at the elementary school, four to five, one kid, through May. He said what he always says, that he would love to but there is no time, and the pastor nodded and did not argue, which was worse than arguing.
His wife heard the story at lunch and slid a legal pad across the table. "Write it down," she said. "The week. All of it." He humored her. Fifty-one hours at work, counting the drive. Fifty-two asleep. Eleven at the table. Seven at church and the kids' games. Nine on the house and the yard. He added it twice. It came to one hundred and thirty, and a week has one hundred and sixty-eight.
Thirty-eight hours he could not find. He knew where they were. His phone could have told him to the minute, and he did not ask it to, because he already knew, and his wife already knew, and the only one who did not know was the pastor, who had been told there was no time.
He calls Monday morning and takes the Thursday.
This is the first room off the hall, and it comes first because it is the currency the other six are spent in. Volunteer work is time given away, and a man cannot give what he has not counted. Money, he counts to the dollar. Time he describes, in the sentence everyone uses and nobody has checked. The room above said the door into service is low. This room says why: the thing it asks for is the one thing every man already has, in the same amount as every other man, and most of it is going somewhere he would not defend if he had to say it out loud.
The Gift of Time
"Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you" — Psalm 39:5
A few handbreadths. The psalmist does not reach for a number. He reaches for a unit a man can see on his own body, the width of his palm, and lays his life out in it: a few of those, side by side, and then the edge. It is not a grim sentence. It is an accurate one, and it is the opposite of the sentence the man said in the parking lot. He said he had no time. The psalm says he has a measured amount, known to the One who measured it, and that the measurement is small enough to be held in view. A man who has never seen the edge of his own time spends it like water. A man who has seen it spends it like money, and the room above has already said what the open hand does with money.
The Same Deposit
Run the account the way the legal pad ran it, because the arithmetic is the whole argument.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours arrive every week, to every man, and none of them carry over. The rich man cannot buy a one hundred and sixty-ninth. The broke man is not shorted one. Nothing else a man owns is issued this evenly, which is why the sentence no time is always false in the way that matters and always true in the way that does not. It is true that his hours are committed. It is false that they are committed by anyone but him. The thirty-eight he could not find were not stolen. They were spent, by him, on things he would not have written on the pad if his wife had not made him, and the gap between the hours a man can name and the hours he has is the first honest reading of where his life is actually going.
Job states the ceiling plainly. "Since his days are determined, and the number of his months is with you, and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass" — Job 14:5. Determined. With you. Cannot pass. Three facts, and not one of them is in the man's hands. What is in his hands is the only remaining variable, which is where the determined hours go between now and the limit, and that is the entire subject of the six rooms ahead.
Given From What He Is
Money and time are both gifts. They are not the same gift, and the person on the receiving end can tell them apart without being told.
A man who gives a hundred dollars gives from what he has. He can earn it back, and both parties know it. A man who gives a Saturday gives from what he is, a slice of the one life, and it is not coming back under any circumstances. That is why the check says I thought of you and the afternoon says I chose you over everything else I could have done with it, and why the second sentence lands in a way no amount on the first can match. The widow does not frame the check. She remembers who sat with her. The boy does not know what the league's budget was. He knows who came.
This cuts two ways, and both men on the hall should hear their half. For the man whose wallet is easy, the hour is where giving starts costing him again, which the room on the open hand already named as the place the work is unfinished. For the man whose money is tight, the arithmetic is relief: he is not priced out of any room on this hall. He holds the currency every one of them runs on, and he holds it in the same amount as the man with the folder of receipts.
What an Hour Buys
Nowhere else in a man's life is the exchange rate this lopsided, and the six rooms ahead are the catalog.
To him, one hour a week is the hour he would not have remembered spending. To the boy in the next room it is the one hour all week when the adult in front of him is not paid to be there. To the kid at the library table it is the semester the letters finally sort. To the old man at the end of the wing it is a face with a day attached. To the woman two doors down it is a mailbox that stands up. The man spends a thing he was wasting, and the person across from him receives a thing that was not for sale. Men who have run that trade do not describe it as sacrifice. They describe it as the best deal they make all week, and they are embarrassed at how long they took to make it.
Paul told a church to treat the hours like a buyer in a market where the good stock is going fast. "Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time" — Colossians 4:5. Best use. Not most use. The man who fills every hour with motion has not obeyed this; he has only been busy. The instruction assumes the hours are limited and the opportunities are not, and tells him to shop accordingly.
The Eleventh Hour
The other sentence men use in the parking lot is later, and this room has a word for the man who has been saying it for thirty years.
He will do this after the career settles. After the mortgage. After the kids are out. There is no later account. There is the current balance, draining at a fixed rate, and a man who has been waiting for a quieter season has watched a great many seasons go by at full volume. Jesus said the work has a closing time and said it about himself. "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work" (John 9:4). While it is day. He did not say the night was far off. He said it was coming, and then he went and did the work in front of him.
And yet the record is kind to the man who starts late, kinder than he expects. In the parable of the vineyard the owner goes out at the eleventh hour and finds men still standing in the market. "Why do you stand here idle all day?" — Matthew 20:6. They had no answer worth recording. He sent them in anyway, with one hour of light left, and at the end of the day "those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius" — Matthew 20:9. A full day's wage for an hour's work. The man who is fifty-five and has never given a Thursday to anyone is not disqualified. He is standing idle in the market with the day mostly gone, and the owner is still hiring, and the pay is not pro-rated. That is not an argument for waiting. It is the reason the waiting man can stop.
How Men Keep the Hour
The man who has no time. He has one hundred and sixty-eight hours and can account for one hundred and thirty. He has never asked where the rest went, because he knows.
The man waiting for the quiet season. He has been waiting since his twenties. The quiet season does not exist, and the kid who needed the Thursday is now thirty.
The man who has only ever given a number. Twenty years of it, generous, and not one afternoon. He believes the number was the costly gift, and the widow who got the number and never got the afternoon could tell him otherwise.
The man with the legal pad. He found thirty-eight hours he could not defend and called the school on Monday. He is not a better man than he was Sunday. He is a man who counted.
He Had Compassion on Them
A man can do all of this. Count the week, find the hours, call on Monday, stop waiting for the season that is not coming. He should. The arithmetic is not complicated and the room has not pretended it is.
And he should know that the most valuable hours ever spent were spent the same way, on people who could not pay for them, by Someone who had every right to keep them. The twelve had come back exhausted and Jesus took them by boat to a quiet place to rest. The crowd ran around the shore and got there first. "When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things" — Mark 6:34. The rest he had set aside was given away before it started. He saw them, and the seeing cost him the afternoon, and he did not count it. The man with the legal pad is going to give an hour a week to a child, and it will cost him a thing he was wasting. He is practicing, at a scale he can manage, what was done for him by Someone whose hours were not a few handbreadths and who spent them anyway, on a shore, on people who had nothing to offer but the running.
Where the Legal Pad Leads
A man who has stood in this room has counted the week. He knows the difference between no time and no decision, and he knows that a gift of hours is given from what he is and not from what he has. He has heard that the eleventh hour pays a full day, and he has stopped waiting for a season that does not exist.
The currency is in his pocket, and it is heavier than he thought. What it buys is the question, and the first answer on this hall is the most direct one there is. Somewhere within a few miles of him is a boy whose father is not coming, and the boy is not looking for a program. He is looking for a man who shows up, and shows up again, until the boy learns what one looks like.