The ten years I spent in solitary confinement gave me a lot of time to think about…time. By the word of God’s power, the galaxies leaped into existence out of nothing (Hebrews 11:3). At His command, there was darkness and light. But even before matter and energy, we read of time: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).


Time is a gift more precious than all the money ever minted. Our time is not our own – it belongs to God. As Moses reminds us in Psalm 90, it’s a matter of eternal significance how we spend the time apportioned to us in this world: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).


In today’s passage, we learn that our growth in grace has much to do with how we spend each moment of our God-given time. Some translations call this “redeeming” (buying back) the time. You may have walked in darkness all your life, but now, if you belong to Jesus Christ, you are called to walk as a child of light (1 Corinthians 6:20).