One of the great love songs of my growing up years was sung by Jim Croce. The lyrics go like this:

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
‘Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you.

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you.

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them.
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with.

Time: the one thing that there never seems to be enough of. Time: the thing that marches on no matter how hard you try to stop it. Time: the one thing in this world that everyone gets the same amount of—whether you’re a King or a Pawn, everyone gets exactly the same amount of time to spend every day. Time: what passes so slowly when you’re a child waiting for Christmas, but which picks up speed with alarming pace the older you get. “Time in a Bottle” was the name of Jim Croce’s song. Something like this hourglass, just some sand in a bottle, that passes through a tiny hole to mark the passage of time. The sand goes through the hole from one side of the bottle to the other, until it is all gone, until it runs out. Time is running out as I speak. Time was running out for Paul.

Sometime around the year 64, about 30 years after Jesus, Paul was coming to the end of his life on earth. He had survived shipwrecks, imprisonment, beatings, persecution, ceaseless travel, and untold spiritual stress brought on by trying to get people to hear and understand the good news about Jesus. He is in prison again, most certainly in Rome. Any record of the charges and circumstances that put him there are lost to history. And he knows the end is near. In what we call his second letter to Timothy, Paul pours out his love and encouragement for this young man who has been Paul’s protégé in ministry, Paul’s son, in some sense, in the Lord. Paul wants to see Timothy one last time. And so twice toward the end of this fairly brief letter he urges him to come. “Do your best to come to me soon,” and again, “Do your best to come before winter.”

Winter is probably the last thing on your mind right now. What with the heat we’ve been having around here, and the fact that we live in a climate where winter is more or less a joke, winter just isn’t on anyone’s radar screen right now. But no matter: winter is coming. Many years ago, a prominent Presbyterian preacher in Pittsburgh preached a sermon with this title of “Come Before Winter,” and it was so popular with his church that they prevailed upon him to preach it once a year. That custom was adopted by Frank Harrington of the Peachtree Church in Atlanta, who would preach the same sermon, more or less, every Labor Day weekend. And I don’t know if I’ll do that, but it seemed to be a good thing to do this year. Labor Day weekend is the unofficial end of summer in our culture. It is the end of the tourist season and the beginning of cheaper rates at hotels. All because, well, winter is coming. I know it is hard to think about winter right now, but that is the exact problem, isn’t it? When the sun is high in the sky it is hard to think of nightfall, and when life is moving along nicely it is hard to think that someday it might end. But night does come. Winter comes. Life on this earth doesn’t go on forever.

Paul gives us a glimpse into the kind of life he had at the end of his little letter to Timothy. He writes about some of the people who have been part of the ministry, members of his churches, folks who have done well and others who have not. He writes about wanting his cloak, his books, his parchments. It is a reminder, to me, that life is full of things, full of people, full of events, full of stuff, and all that is right and good and necessary. But as winter approaches, all the stuff that fills up a life becomes less important, and only the most important things have much meaning anymore. Paul is still somewhat concerned about this stuff, but mostly, he is concerned about Timothy, and Timothy’s ministry, and the health of the churches, and the books and parchments on which were most likely written the words of Scripture. Paul is thinking of these deep things because, for him, time is running out.

Albert Einstein helped us see that time is a flexible, fluid thing. Time is relative depending on the perspective of the one who observes time. That is all well and good when we think about space travel and the speed of light and such. For most of us, and for most practical aspects, time is absolute. Time, for God, doesn’t mean much because God is eternal. But God has given you and me a form of existence that is very much bound by time. God gives us time as a gift, and since we cannot put it in a bottle and save it up, here is the question and the challenge that faces us every single second of every single minute of every single hour of every single day that we live: what are we going to do with our time? “Come before winter,” Paul begs of Timothy, because you never know when it will be too late to do what you want to do.

I hear jokes all the time that use words that I cannot use in the pulpit. They are “bad” words. But I’m going to use a “bad” word today, and it has more than 4 letters. It is the word “procrastinate.” Now I’m not going to beat on people who procrastinate because I am one of them. I suspect that all of us are, so maybe I’m going to beat on all of us! Procrastinate is such a bad word because it has to do with the misuse of time, which is nothing less than the misuse of life itself. Jim Croce is right that there is never enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them, but there is at least enough time in this life to so some of those things, and the great challenge for you and me is to find them, and then to do them.

Let me mention briefly—because we don’t have much time—3 areas in which we must never fail to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. One area has to do with our health. One of my favorite people on television died a few weeks ago, the movie reviewer Joel Siegel. He died from colon cancer that might have been cured had it been caught early enough. He’s not the first high-profile person or the first person you know to wait too long to take care of himself. We are all guilty of that to some degree or other. When it comes to your health, winter is coming. Do something about it!

Another area has to do with our personal relationships. There is a name in my Palm organizer that I have not and will not ever erase. It is the name Jim Formhals. Jim died three years ago next month. But he was a very good friend of mine who lived in Albuquerque. He died of a heart attack while on a treadmill. He was just over 50. The week before, he left a message on my home telephone. He wanted to talk. I had not called him back. That conversation will have to wait for heaven. Procrastination is a bad word. When it comes to the people you love, winter is coming. Do something about it!

The final area has to do with our relationship with God. The old joke goes that the doctor has good news and bad news for his patient. You remember it: the good news is that the patient is going to heaven; the bad news is that he’s going tomorrow. In the summertime of life it is so easy to deny that summertime doesn’t last forever. Most of the time God is very gracious and he gives us all sorts of warning signs that winter is coming. Sometimes there are no signs. When it comes to your relationship with God, why would anyone wait even one second before making sure that they were on good terms with God? And why would anyone wait before taking one more step down the road of getting to know God just a little bit better? We all do it; we all procrastinate when it comes to knowing and loving our Lord. I don’t know why, but we do.

I have some good news for you today. Winter is coming. But it is not yet here! While we still have life and breath, winter is not yet here! But I have to be honest with you, too. Winter is coming. Until we can learn to manipulate time like Einstein dreamed, we will have to deal with this simple fact of life of which Paul so simply reminds us. Dear Friends, in whatever area of your life you’ve been putting off what needs doing, let me encourage you, come before winter.

Amen.