Time

Raise your hand if this is your favorite time of the year. Most people I know love this time of the year, approaching it with as much enthusiasm as … well as a kid thinking of the brightly colored packages Santa will leave under the Christmas tree. But this time of the year also comes with a price, and not just a monetary one. In the flurry of activity between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, there never seems to be enough time to check off everything on our to-do lists. There’s always one more gift to buy, one more holiday party to attend or activity to do, one more Christmas cookie to bake, one more Christmas card to address, one more Elf-on-a-Shelf scenario to come up with, one more, one more, one more … The song may say that this is “the most wonderful time of the year,” but it could also be argued that this is the busiest time of the year.

It’s a coincidence, then, that Mitch Albom just happened to release his new book, The Time Keeper, and I just happened to see it at Costco and I just happened to request it from the library and it just happened to come in for me last week and I just happened to finish it in two days. Coincidence … right … Ever since reading Tuesdays with Morrie, I’ve been a Mitch Albom fan. The tales his novels tell are poignant; the characters he creates are believable, everyman characters; and the messages his stories impart resonate deep within you, making you reflect on your life and how you live it. The Time Keeper is no exception. Telling the tale of Father Time, the man who “sinned” by trying to measure “God’s greatest gift,” Albom’s latest novel examines how we have, to borrow an idea from the novel, turned time into an industry and encourages us to examine our own ideas of time, how we spend it, and whether we spend it wisely.

I couldn’t think of a more perfect book to read at this time of the year, especially as the year winds down and we begin to think about New Year’s resolutions and what we want to accomplish next year. If you’re a reader, I encourage you to pick up The Time Keeper and read it. (I actually encourage you to read all of Albom’s novels, especially Tuesdays with Morrie and Have a Little Faith.) If you’re not a reader, I’ve pulled out the quotes from the book that hit me the hardest and placed them below—at least read and reflect on them. Trust me, your time will be well-spent in either endeavor.

Quotes from The Time Keeper

Soon man will count all his days, and then the smaller segments of the day, and then smaller still—until the counting consumes him, and the wonder of the world he has been given is lost.

As mankind grew obsessed with its hours, the sorrow of lost time became a permanent hole in the human heart.

It is never too late or too soon. It is when it is supposed to be.

But a man who can take anything will find most things unsatisfying. And a man without memories is just a shell.

Knowing something and understanding it were not the same thing.

“I would have given my life.”

“Would you have taken it?”

“No, child,” he said. “That is not ours to do.”

Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be an answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future. … hope.

Without loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have.

Man wants to own his own existence. But no one owns time.

When you are measuring life you are not living it.

There is a reason why God limits our days … To make each one precious.