Time!  There are 7 days in every week, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in every hour, and 60 seconds in every minute.  I know.  These facts are elementary.   I want to consider time not in terms of numbers on a clock but in terms of use.  How do you and I spend our time?  That’s right!  Time is “spent.”  It is spent and gone forever.  Someone illustrated time in this way.  Let’s say that someone deposits into your bank account $1,440.00 every day for the rest of your life.  Wouldn’t that be great?  That’s well over $500,000.00 every year.  Boy, wouldn’t we all like to participate in a program like this!  I know that my entire family would love to “help” me in a project like this.  As with any other program, there’s always “fine print” that needs to be considered.  Here we find that one of the rules is this:  Every single dollar of our $1,440.00 must be spent that day.  None can be saved.  How does this “fine print” change the way we would plan our spending?   Think about it!  We are given 1,440 minutes every day, minutes that we must spend, minutes that cannot be saved or accumulated or given to another.  At the end of the day we find that our “time account” is empty, and every morning our “time account” is once again filled with 1,440 minutes.   How do we spend our 1,440 minutes?  We must sleep.  There go 480 minutes.  We have 960 left.  We go to school or to work.  There go another 480 minutes.  We now have only 480 minutes.  We eat two or three times every day.  120 minutes gone.  360 left.  What about getting to and from school or work?  Another 40 minutes in traffic.  320 left.  We all need to take a shower.  There go another 30 minutes (60 for teenagers).  Only 290 left for all the other activities in which we need to participate:  prayer, study, worship, homework, housework, TV, games,       practice, shopping, talking on the phone, visiting with our friends, paying bills, on and on we could go.  How much time did you take to read this article?  There goes another 5 minutes.   Seconds pass…minutes…hours…days.  How are we spending our time?  Are we spending our time wisely?  Are we being wasteful?  How much time do we spend worrying, regretting, arguing, pouting, or participating in activities that do not promote health, happiness, and salvation?   The Bible tells us that life is “even as a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away” (James 4:14).   There are three things in life that really matter:  our faith in God, our family, and our friends.   We should center every one of our 1,440 minutes on what really matters.   On Sunday morning we will continue in our series “Walking in the Footprints of Jesus.”  In God’s plan of salvation we must walk in the footprint of faith.  We must also walk in the footprint of repentance.  Our study on Sunday will take us to the footprint of confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.   On Sunday evening we will look at step 3 in our series “Four Steps to Effective Living” and answer the question, “Where am I going?”  We have talked about the importance of knowing who you are and knowing how to make good choices when it comes to effective living.  On Sunday evening we will focus on the destination of those living an effective life.   A new Bible study series on Wednesday begins on September 19th at 7:00 p.m., in the auditorium.  Our theme for the quarter will be “The Deep Things of God.”  Every member is encouraged to attend.  Topics will include:  The Existence of God, The Second Coming of Christ, The Holy Spirit, Angels, The Soul, Satan, Death, The Resurrection, Heaven, Hell, and The Book of Life.