A Prayer for Making Minutes Matter
By Tammy Darling
Bible Reading:
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15-16, NIV
Listen or Read Below:
The train barreled down the local railroad tracks just the same as any other day. But for the engineer, the day was about to become his worst nightmare. An impatient driver, not wanting to wait for the train to pass, tried to race across the tracks. He didn’t make it. The train hit the vehicle broadside, pushing it 200 yards down the tracks. The motorist, not wanting to wait just a few minutes, lost his life.
Minutes matter more than we realize. If you don’t think so, try telling a terminally ill person that minutes don’t matter. Minutes matter because our lives matter, and relationships matter. Our obedience to God matters, and He expects not only that we obey what He says but also that we use our minutes wisely.
The way we steward our minutes says a lot about the value we place on our lives, on the value God has placed on our lives. We think that 5 minutes doing this and 10 minutes doing that don’t matter, but they do. That 5 becomes 10 and 10 becomes 20, and 20 turns into 30, and before we know it, we’ve developed a habit. And that habit soon becomes a lifestyle.
The passing of minutes happens so quickly that we don’t even realize just how much time has gone by. One of my children would often call out to me to help with something, and I’d reply, “Just a minute.” Fifteen minutes later, the child came looking for me again because I had never come. Just like that, I allowed 60 seconds to become 900 seconds. No wonder our kids have such difficulty with the concept of time! So when my daughter proclaimed that it would take her 27 million years to finish her math lesson, I let it slide.
I don’t work as hard as I used to. I’ve learned to grant myself the grace to rest. Some days I’ll even take a nap…guilt-free. I no longer view a nap as a waste of time but as time well spent, as I get up feeling refreshed and recharged. And if I never fall asleep, I get in some good prayer time. Bonus.
God didn’t create us to labor 24/7. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,” says Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV). The minutes I spend matter…for eternity. And I want to honor that.
If we want to avoid negative consequences, we need to realize that our minutes matter and that God wants us to use them wisely. There have been times throughout our 37-year marriage when my husband and I didn’t use our time wisely. Busy with our own things, we didn’t make time for each other; our marriage suffered greatly as a result, and it took a while for us to get back in sync.
When we don’t think our minutes matter, our relationship with God suffers. Our God is faithful, but if we want to be spared negative consequences, we need to follow His way rather than our own. It’s that simple.
What if Lot’s wife held on to her instructions for just 5 more minutes? A physical act of the will can mean the difference between life and death. Our obedience is tied to ourselves. Our self-control. Our self-interest. Our self-discipline.
The more we are faithful to develop our character and our relationship with God, the more easily we’ll be able to do what God asks of us. We never know when our obedience will be a matter of mere minutes…or even seconds.
When my husband and I were in the midst of a five-plus-year international adoption, we were desperate to see our son and booked flights to Haiti. As the departure day approached, we felt extremely uneasy and sensed God telling us not to go. We were devastated but nevertheless canceled the flights, which turned out to be a good thing as in-country protests and rioting soon had the capital of Haiti on lockdown. We were spared from God alone.
Sometimes our minutes may be a matter of life or death; other times they may be a matter of stewardship. Either way, our minutes matter greatly to God. And because those minutes matter to God, they should matter to us as well.
Let’s Pray
Heavenly Father,
Because every minute is precious and every one of them is a gift from You, may we learn to mind our minutes and to make the most of every minute we have, for Your glory and honor.
In Your Precious Name, Amen.
Share your reflections on today’s devotional in the Your Daily Prayer discussion on the Crosswalk Forum.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/AtarzynaBialasiewicz
Tammy Darling is the author of 1,600 published articles and three books. She writes from her home in rural Pennsylvania.
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Originally published Thursday, 01 October 2026.
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