What a Lot to Spend!
The importance of time
by Brian Radcliffe
Suitable for Whole School (Pri)
Aims
To encourage us to consider how to use our time well.
Preparation and materials
- None required.
Assembly
- Explain that you want to make the children an offer. State that you are offering them £86,400 a day, every day - and there are only two conditions attached. First, they must spend every penny of the £86,400 each day. They can’t save any until the next day or the next week; it must all be used. Second, the offer can finish at any time. They can’t depend on receiving £86,400 tomorrow; it may not be there.
- Ask the children, ‘How do you feel about the offer?’
Listen to a range of responses.
Ask the children what they might do with the money.
Listen to a range of responses. - Point out that although it sounds like a generous offer, have they considered what they are going to do about the two conditions? How can they ensure that they spend the whole amount by the end of each day? It will require a deliberate plan of action. They might need to spend some on themselves and give away the rest for the benefit of others. And how are they going to tackle the possibility that there might be no money coming tomorrow?
Acknowledge that everyone must agree that it’s a remarkable offer! - Explain that there’s a bit of a trick here. Ask the children whether they can guess what the trick is.
Explain that your offer doesn’t relate to money, sadly. Tell the children that 86,400 is the number of seconds in a day. When we multiply 24 hours by 60 minutes by 60 seconds, it comes to 86,400 seconds.
Every day, we are gifted 86,400 seconds - no more, no less. We must use every second on the day when it happens; we can’t save an hour or two for tomorrow. The only thing that’s certain is that, one day, time will run out for us. The offer will end. - So, how might we spend this huge amount of time, day by day?
Ask the children what they think might be important to do each day.
Listen to a range of responses.
Point out that we’re advised to spend 28,800 seconds - or eight hours - asleep, doing nothing. However, although we’re doing nothing, this time is important because it enables our mind and body to recharge. Spending less time asleep is likely to affect how we function in our waking time.
We can use our waking time in many ways: having fun with our friends and family, doing sports and activities, learning, eating and drinking. All of these are important because they can stimulate our brains, keep us interested and be satisfying. However, it might be good to devote some seconds (or thousands of seconds) to others too. We could provide company for the lonely, help people who can’t manage certain tasks themselves or build our communities through environmental work. Each day, it would be time well spent.
Time for reflection
It can be helpful to think of time in this way. We appreciate that £86,400 is a lot of money; it is very valuable. Yet we don’t tend to think of time as a valuable commodity, so we can end up letting it slip away, like money through our fingers. We waste time, we rush time, we don’t plan how to invest each second, minute or hour. We take time for granted, especially when we’re young. Our attitude is: there’s always tomorrow. However, as we get older, we begin to realize that tomorrow’s time may not arrive.
Jesus gave some sound advice about how to handle time (see Matthew 6.34). He suggested that we should take one day at a time and not spend today worrying about tomorrow.
Ask the children to think up a list of ways of spending their time that are the most important for each day. These might include eating, sleeping, working, playing, spending time with family and friends and so on.
Encourage the children to consider whether they need to make a special effort to spend time this week on one particular thing. For example, when did they last spend time reading to a younger sibling or helping around the house? When did they last spend time with a friend or a grandparent?
Suggest to the children that they take time to consider the week ahead. Do they think that they need to change any of their priorities?
Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you for the gift of time.
Thank you for all the wonderful things that we have the opportunity to do.
Please help us to be generous with our time.
Help us to think of others and use time for their benefit, not just our own.
Amen.
