I recently had my Upward Bound students take a look out of the classroom window at building.  I posed the questions is it moving.  All of the students said of course not, it’s stationary.

But here’s one of the amazing things about how our universe works.  All objects, even stationary ones like buildings, parked cars, fire hydrants, etc. are actually moving.  If you could hover over them what would you observe?  You’d observe them rotating in sync with the earth.  But that’s not all.  One of the astonishing things that Albert Einstein discovered is that things not only move through space, they simultaneously move through time.

Our minds can easily discern that one hundred years from now that building would have moved through 100 years of time.  Now the mind blowing part of what Einstein discovered is that the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time.  And, the slower you move through time, the faster you move through space.  Checkout the latest installment of Buzz Lightyear to get it explained to you like you’re a third grader.

The big insight here is that time, how we use it, really matters.

Dr. Benjamin Mays put it this way in a poem called “I Have Only Just a Minute”

I have only just a minute,

Only sixty seconds in it.

Forced upon me, can’t refuse it.

Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.

But it’s up to me

to use it.

I must suffer if I lose it.

Give account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute,

but eternity is in it.

May’s and Einstein understood that wasting time is the same as wasting your life.