"A pastor had trouble remembering the names of his church members, so he developed a technique of glancing at their names, which were printed on the covers of their Bible, as they spoke. His tactic worked fine until one day he called a lady “Sister Genuine Leather.”
The pastor should have looked for a better technique, because remembering names is an important skill to develop. Dale Carnige, who wrote the classic, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” said the sweetest sound to any man’s ears is his own name. The writings of Paul in the New Testament are filled with personal greetings by name.
But why do most of us do so poorly with names? Because we don’t take time to listen to them in the first place. Next time you’re introduced to someone, take 10 extra seconds to actually listen to their name and say it back to the person. Taking time to show an interest in people is always redeeming the time.
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"Listen to these 2 sentences and see if you can tell what they have in common:
1. Glum Schwartzkopf vex'd by NJ IQ.
2. Blowzy night-frumps vex'd Jack Q.
Other than the fact they don’t make any sense, these two sentences represent perfect pangrams. A pangram is a sentence which uses all 26 letters of the alphabet, like when you learned to type, and you wrote ""The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog."" These two sentences are each only 26 letters long meaning they use all 26 letters without any extras.
I don’t know who first came up with those sentences, but I would guess it was someone who loved efficiency and had zero tolerance for waste, both of which are good qualities for any Christian to strive toward.
We have a cause far greater than the perfect pangram. We’re trying to get people to heaven. That’s why we live efficiently and redeem the time.
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"Do you ever wonder what sort of people write owners manuals? One baby walker owner’s manual gives step by step instructions on how to store the walker. Step one it said was to remove the baby.
Some manuals can be more useful than others. For more expensive items it’s a good idea to keep the manual on file. Staple the sales receipt to the manual and then file it where you can find if there’s a problem. If your file gets too big, divide it into several files of electronics, appliances, yard equipment, and so on. Periodically purge your manuals file of those you no longer need.
There’s one manual you don’t want to file away. It’s the one God gave for getting through this life successfully and making it to Heaven. We need to use it every day. The Bible contains no frivolous instructions, just valuable information for people who want to redeem the time.
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"A man complained to the bank teller, “But my checking account couldn’t possibly be overdrawn. I’ve still got 17 checks left.”
If you’ve ever overdrawn your checking account, you know it can be a very costly mistake. Bank fees can be very steep for waiting too long to make that deposit.
But we can also loose valuable time through different types of overdrafts. For example, in most states you can now get your car tags renewed by mail, if you mail it on time. But if the renewal form sits in your in tray too long, you may have to spend hours renewing in person. If you don’t pay parking tickets quickly you might spend hours getting your impounded car back. If you wait too long to ask for help putting the church Christmas play together, guess who’ll be up all night getting the costumes ready by them self.
Avoiding overdrafts is a smart way to redeem the time.
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