While it is Day

“I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4 NKJV).

Some people have a problem when they hit thirty years of age. Not me, it was forty for me.  When you reach the age of your father when you were born, your father will be double your age.  That was the magical number for me.  I was forty and my Dad was eighty.  To me, it was like a billboard saying my life was half over.  Yes, my Dad was still active and in pretty good shape at eighty but he was getting older.  By the way, he had maybe five good years after that and died when he was just a few days shy of ninety.

Back to my fortieth birthday and the months after it in 1995; it was not as if I went into a deep depression or anything critical. It is doubtful I said much about it to anyone; but I remember contemplating and praying about it.  I said to myself and perhaps to God, “If I am going to do anything with my life, I need to get busy with it.”  It was a chronological wake-up call.

It was not like I had been a prodigal wasting my life away as a beach bum, though I have a number of years in my twenties I would especially love to redo. I was at my third post as a minister.  I was married to a great lady who was a school teacher (yes, Jennie is still with me), we had two teenage kids, a house with a mortgage and two cars in the driveway.  Yet it wasn’t as “Brady Bunch” as it sounds, because I had resigned my first full-time pastorate just nine months prior with a call from God to start an outreach ministry and was trusting God for my portion to the household budget—it was stressful and tough.

So here I sit at forty years of age with some life experience behind me and a future in front of me but for the first time in my life I saw an expiration date. It was more than a little sobering.  Thankfully, instead of a pity party, I had myself a little pep talk, “Okay buddy, you can’t be dillydallying around, this is the second half of the ballgame—get with it!  If you’re going to do anything worthwhile, today is the day.”

Twenty years and nine months have transpired since that fortieth birthday and I wish I could tell you I haven’t wasted any time, treasure, and opportunity but that would be a lie. Neither, do I think I am the poster child for productivity or success—I am certainly not.  But, I can tell you this; I have kept my eye on the expiration date.

I don’t want to depress you but to encourage you! Please work for God “while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work”.  I am not sure of your age and only God knows your expiration date on this earth—but you better get busy and make hay while the sun is shining.  Time stops for no one, not even you!

Harry L. Whitt

(11) And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.  (12) The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.  (Romans 13:11-12 NKJV).

Pathway Outreach Ministries