As we cross the threshold into a new year, ask the Lord to give you a new beginning of obedience to him.

I have on my desk in my study a beautiful hourglass.

It means a great deal to me. It actually is not an hourglass. It measures 15 minutes of time. It's a gift from my family. It's inscribed with a special message, and it means

so much to me not only for sentimental reasons of who gave it to me, but it's a reminder to me that every moment of my life

counts. Sometimes I'll turn it over and just sit and watch the sand drop through that glass.

And it makes me think that's how quickly life passes. Minutes soon become hours and hours become

days and days become, well, you get the idea.

Recently, my father gave me a powerful quote by a man named Lichtenberg who lived in the 1700s.

He said, the hourglass is reminder not only of times quick flight, but concurrently also of the dust to which we

shall at last return. I'd never thought of it that way before. When I look at the hourglass, it's not only

a measurement of time, it's a reminder that I'm dust, and someday I'm going back to the dust of the

ground, and the spirit is going back to God who gave it.

In the end, only eternity matters.

We measure time by years and months and events and accomplishments, but God, God measures time by days.

You know, God measures everything so much different than we do. And repeatedly in

Scripture, the Holy Spirit emphasizes the days that make up our life and the passing of those days.

And then at the end, we enter in, if we know the Lord, into one eternal day. If you go all the way

back to the first page of the Bible to Genesis

chapter 1 and verse number 5, you read that the evening and the morning were the first day.

So on the very first page of Holy Scripture, our God, the creator, established this basic unit

of life. Life is made up of evening and morning. Life is made up of days.

And then if you go to the end of your Bible, go to the final page. And come to Revelation

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