Redeeming the Time

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. EPHESIANS 5:15–16

Baxter published around a hundred and forty books. He did it while pastoring a parish of two thousand souls, preaching twice a week, catechising fourteen families a week, carrying on a vast correspondence, engaging in most of the theological controversies of his century — and being seriously ill for practically the whole of it. He was not a well man who worked hard. He was a man in continual pain who expected to die shortly and worked as though he might not finish the sentence.

Time as the material of life

His teaching on time follows directly from his teaching on heaven. If this life is the brief interval in which an eternal condition is settled, then time is not a resource among others. It is the material out of which everything of lasting consequence is made, and it is issued in a quantity nobody knows.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. PSALM 90:12

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. JAMES 4:14

Baxter’s habitual expectation of an early death was, in one sense, a mistake — he lived to seventy-six. In another sense it was the making of him, because he never once assumed he had time to spare.

Where it actually goes

He was practical about the leaks, and his list has aged remarkably well. Idleness, which he distinguished carefully from rest. Rest is necessary and God-given; idleness is the aimless consumption of hours that produces neither refreshment nor work. Excessive sleep, which he treated as a genuine spiritual issue and about which he was probably harder than he should have been. Unprofitable talk, in which he included most gossip and a good deal of what passes for conversation. Baxter reckoned that many Christians spend more hours a week in idle speech than in all their religious duties combined. Needless recreation. He allowed recreation and thought it necessary, but insisted it be treated as a means — refreshment for work — rather than an end pursued for its own sake. Over-attention to business. Interestingly, he named this too. A man may lose his life to legitimate work as thoroughly as to idleness, and be praised for it throughout.

I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. JOHN 9:4

How to redeem it

His directions are unremarkable and effective. Know your calling, and give the bulk of your hours to it rather than to whatever presents itself. Plan the day in advance, since unplanned time is almost always lost time. Do the most important thing first, while you are able. Use the fragments — Baxter was a great believer in the odd quarter-hour, and much of his writing was done in intervals. And review at day’s end, which connects this chapter to the last.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. ECCLESIASTES 9:10

An honest qualification

Here Baxter needs correcting, and it would be dishonest not to say so. He drove himself extremely hard, and there is reason to think it cost him. His health was wretched throughout, and while much of that was constitutional, some of it was almost certainly the consequence of a regime no body could sustain. He worked when he should have stopped, and he was severe with himself in ways he would never have been with a parishioner. His teaching can therefore be taken up in a way that damages people, and in an age that already worships productivity the danger is considerable. Two correctives are necessary. Rest is commanded, not merely permitted. God built a day of it into the week and did not make it optional.

Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. MARK 6:31

That is the Lord’s instruction to workers who were genuinely busy with genuinely important work.

And our worth does not consist in our output. A believer prevented from working by illness, age or circumstance has lost nothing of his standing before God. Baxter, of all people, ought to have known this, and in his better moments he did.

Redeem the time, then — but redeem it for the right things, and remember that sleeping when you are exhausted is one of them.

Ordinary work as service

A necessary balance, since a chapter on time can leave the impression that hours spent on secular work are hours subtracted from God. Baxter held firmly that they are not. His treatment of vocation in A Christian Directory covers trades, farming, commerce and household management at length, and treats them as genuine service rather than as regrettable necessities.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. COLOSSIANS 3:23–24

Paul is addressing slaves. If the most degraded labour in the Roman world could be done as service to Christ and receive a reward from Him, then no honest work is outside the arrangement. Baxter drew practical consequences that were unusual in his century and remain useful. Choose a calling, where you have the choice, by its usefulness to others rather than by what it pays. Do it well. Shoddy work by a Christian is a testimony, and not a good one. Treat it as the place where most of your obedience will actually happen. A person converted at twenty and dying at seventy will spend perhaps ninety thousand hours at work and a small fraction of that in explicitly religious activity. If holiness cannot operate in the ninety thousand, it will not amount to much.

Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord. ROMANS 12:11

Baxter put those three together as one instruction, and so did Paul. Diligence at work, warmth of spirit, and service to Christ are not three separate departments of a life.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Track where your hours actually went last week. The gap between your estimate and the truth is the finding. 2. Plan tomorrow tonight. Unplanned time is nearly always lost time. 3. Identify your largest single leak — idleness, talk, screens, or overwork — and address that one rather than everything. 4. Use the fragments. A quarter of an hour, used regularly, adds up to more than most people’s good intentions. 5. Take your rest without guilt. It is commanded, and your worth does not depend on your output.

A PRAYER

Father, You have given me a fixed number of days and I do not know the number.

Teach me to number them. Show me where my hours are going, and give me the resolve to spend them on what will matter when I stand before You.

Deliver me from idleness, and equally from the busyness that looks like faithfulness and is only fear.

And when I need to stop, let me stop without shame — knowing that You value me for what Your Son has done and not for what I produce. Amen.