the process of remembering: a photoblog by andrew huth

My Uncle Burt is one of the wisest men I know. If the worth of a person’s life can be measured by the sincerity and depth of their love for others and God, then his life would be priceless. He is priceless.

In a conversation not long ago he told me that Paul wrote in the book of Ephesians (in the Bible) that we ought to redeem the time for the days are evil. He asked me what I thought it meant. I said, I suppose it’s telling us to save our time. To this he said, “why would your time need saving?” Of course I didn’t fully realize my time was in trouble and in need of my redemption.

He had me think about all of the things in my life that take up my time, day in and day out, that I most likely didn’t give much thought to. I realized that so much of life is filled with things we hardly plan, but rather live them unknowingly (going to work and being there for 8 hours, eating, taking a shower, parties, watching TV, etc). He wasn’t telling me never to do any of these things, but rather to caution me that it is far to easy to live an unimportant life when I am unaware how much of my life is at the mercy of a day, a week, a month, or a year’s worth of “normal” activities that I call my life. He was asking me to live with the awareness that a day is often evil in that it can steal our time without us even knowing it has.

For this reason, we need to live with purpose and redeem our time from the day’s schedule.

He is a wise, loving, and purposeful man.