It is January 2 today and I love the idea of a new year full of opportunities. Yes, I am one of those who always looks for the positive. My mind always runs to Psalm 90 at this time of year.

There the Psalmist contemplates the eternality of God and his own mortality and concludes with these words:

12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

From there he prays that the Lord will establish the work of his hands. In other words, let what we do count for the kingdom!

I am also reminded of the tyranny of the immediate in my life. Who’s got time for God in this busy world we live in. We are bombarded by opportunities, noise, opinions, technology. It all gets rather overwhelming if we are not careful.

To make matters worse, we know we should carve out time with God but we feel guilty that we do not do that often enough. That very guilt compounds and builds between us and God.

Some years ago I read a book by Gordon MacDonald in which he advocated for the creation of Sabbathing moments in the middle of our busy lives to allow time for our souls to catch up with our bodies.

What is a Sabbathing moment? It is an intentional use of 5 minutes (can be any length), in which you shut down and spend time talking to God. That time may be prayer, it may be reading His Word, it may be quiet meditation.

Who’s got time? You and I do. We have 86,400 seconds to spend each day. Time we will never get back. How will we spend that time this day? Let’s make some Sabbathing moments in our busy lives to quiet ourselves with God and to be reminded that He is still God.