Sunday, October 5, 2008

3900 Saturdays

I received this in an email this week. It is priceless.

3900 Saturdays
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whom-ever he was talking with something about 'a thousand marbles.' I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.
'Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It's too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital,' he continued, 'Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities.' And that's when he began to explain his theory of a thousand marbles.
'You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.
'Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail', he went on, 'and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.
'Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.
'Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.'
'It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!'
You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. 'C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast.' 'What brought this on?' she asked with a smile. 'Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles.'
Okay, so it really makes you think. I just happen to have a container of marbles in my office I used for a kid’s object lesson one time. So I took it out and I counted all of the marbles in it - 2170 marbles - which divided by 52 weeks comes out to 41.7 years of Saturdays. By the way, if I lived that long I’d be over ninety, but since my Grandmother is 99 right now, who knows? So, that got me thinking. What if we used that same object lesson to remind us to tell one more person about Jesus - and in my case 2170 people? That’s one a week and it could be more. What if you had a container that you put a marble in each time you told someone about Jesus? Or you could take a marble out of your “Saturdays left” container and put in the “Saved by Jesus” container. As your “Saturdays left” container decreases the “Saved” container increases. All those Saturdays will be gone and just a memory from the past. But all those people who were saved, you will see again in heaven. So I’m taking my marbles (usually losing my marbles) home. I’m going to take one out every Saturday to remind myself what’s important, to prioritize, and this world is not my home. Then I’m going to put one in the “Saved” container every time I help someone come to know Christ.

Have a great day in the Lord!