Where Has the Time Gone

I liked most of this recent post by Jon Bloom over at the Desiring God blog: "We Have Now Not to Waste."  (The part I didn't like was when the article ended with a plug for buying one of their books in bulk; seemed relatively shallow in contrast with the deeper message intended to be conveyed.) 

The end of summer and the onset of middle age can leave many of us in a panic.  Where has the time gone?  What are we doing with our lives?  Why do the days pass by so quickly, and we haven't done the things we thought we would have done by now?

My mind wanders here often, and it reveals a pretty petty inner core.  I wish that my home improvements projects were farther along, that I'd traveled more, that I'd gotten a chance to do "bucket list" kinds of things.  Interspersed in there are some other, more noble thoughts: that I'd said "I love you" to my wife more often, spent more quality time with my kids, and done more acts of service.

For the Christian, there ought to be a certain perspective about time.  All people should realize that their lives are finite, but Christians are supposed to be believe that our lives are infinite, and that we've been given specific instructions about how we are to spend our finite days while we are in our bodies, and what consequence our behavior while we are in our bodies has on where and how we spend infinity. 

And yet, if you poll the average non-Christian, I'm sure they won't tell you they see anything different about their Christian friends when it comes to this notion of not wasting our lives.  Whether or not they say anything different with their words, their behaviors are remarkably the same as others': we hoard our possessions, pursue selfish ambition, neglect the plight of those around us, and otherwise go about our days seemingly oblivious to the folly of living just for this world and its temporal comforts. 

How is it that Christians have a fundamentally different conception of life and eternity, and yet it is not lived out in any meaningful way for non-Christians to at least discern a difference, let alone be intrigued by or attracted to it?  I, for one, as a Christian, am ashamed that we have been such a poor testament to what we claim to believe.